


A Goblin's Child

by farevenasdecidedtouse



Category: Borderland Series - Terri Windling, The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: AUs Only the Author And A Couple Other Weirdos Care About, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Don't Have to Know Canon, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6246070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farevenasdecidedtouse/pseuds/farevenasdecidedtouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another day in Bordertown, another runaway with a troubled past and hopes for a fresh start. No matter how trite his story, however, the strange-looking newcomer's presence stands to shape the lives of those around him in ways he could hardly dream of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The windows of the tall, green house flickered with enough light against the gathering dusk that I felt no compunction (but plenty of apprehension) about rapping the cat-shaped door knocker. A moment passed, and then the door swung open to reveal two men of the Blood, one sporting severely pulled-back hair and a scowl, the other tall and lanky, wearing spectacles and a warm-looking human tunic. Both stared with the unguarded curiosity of anyone seeing me for the first time and I fought a flush of embarrassment. “Er. Good evening. I was directed here by… well, I was directed here,” I muttered, eyes downcast as I offered the scrap of paper I had found myself clutching since the Gate.

The tall one stepped forward and pressed a slender finger to the sigil imprinted thereupon. “It’s certainly Runner’s work, or as close as would make no difference,” he told his companion.

A low voice and the graceful movements of a dancer flashed in my mind like a fragment of a dream. “Runner! Yes! We were at the Elfhame Gate and…” I faltered. My interrogator took pity on me and beckoned me into a long, low-ceilinged room filled with worn furniture and with lit candles illuminating a table sporting an abandoned game of cards, a nook near the window where some sort of arcane configuration of prisms and lenses hung, and a small room beyond that might have been a kitchen.

“It’s all right. Your memory’s bound to be a bit shaken up if you’ve just made the passage,” he said, gesturing for me to set my pack down near the card table. “I’m called the Magus, and this is Darel. We’re acquaintances of Runner, the individual who appears to have recommended you to us here at the Palace.” For what felt like the first time but must have been the hundredth, I glanced down at the paper still clutched in my hand. _40 Carnival Street, tell whoever may be there that Runner sent you._ “What may we call you?” the Magus continued.

For a moment my mouth hung open like a landed fish’s. True name, use name, the thousand aliases I had heard from this side of the Gate clouded my fogged mind into complete obfuscation. A new life, a chance for the remaking of myself, and all that suddenly echoed through my head was my cousin’s vitriol: _goblin’s child, ugly changeling brat, show me not thy face…_

“Goblin.” I somehow managed to suppress the associated wince. “Call me Goblin.”

“Goblin.” The Magus nodded. “Darel, is Runner’s room still unoccupied or has anyone relocated there? Or you’re welcome to the sofa, which might be more comfortable.”

“So long as it’s off the street I have no preference,” I said. Realizing the thought of the previous night sheltered by the ruin of what might once have been a house like this one had made me grasp my pack all the tighter, I loosed my grip self-consciously.

“The sofa, then, until the rest of the house has a say,” Darel said with a jerk of his chin toward the low, cloth-covered seat under the window.

The Magus stepped over to it and proceeded to lower it by means of a lever on the side into a rough bed, beckoning me to it in turn with a comforting nod. “If you come recommended I see no reason why the rest of the house should turn you down… please, sit down. You’re half asleep on your feet.” He beckoned me toward a deep armchair in one corner and I sat, averting my eyes from the dishevelled grey-and-black blur I noticed out of the corner of one eye in a mirror over the well-used fireplace. "You must be famished. Is any of that bread that Queen of Swords brought home left?"

Darel shrugged but strode off toward the kitchen nonetheless. He returned with a plate of the promised bread, unleavened and covered with unfamiliar sweet-smelling, dark ropes of vegetables, round green leaves and some kind of white curd. The flavors together were like nothing I had ever tasted, sharpened by my own hunger (when _had_ I last eaten?) and before long I set the plate aside with a contented sigh, settling for a moment before I meant to get up to help the Magus assemble the pillows and blankets taken from a nearby cupboard.

The next thing I knew was a window in my periphery spilling daylight through a spider’s web of cracked diamond panes. I set up, sweeping twin skeins of dark curls out of my eyes, and found myself buried beneath a soft red blanket on the reclining couch, still dressed in my clothes of the day before. No one from the previous night was anywhere to be seen, and the quiet of the empty house could have been the hostile silence of the place I had left. Hastily I climbed to my feet, risked a glance into a tarnished mirror over the fireplace to assemble my hair into an untidy braid (aside from dark circles below my eyes two shades greyer than the rest of my skin, nothing out of the ordinary presented itself) and moments later had the sum of my possessions under my arm and was stepping out the door into a blinkingly bright city morning. Five paces forward I realized I hadn’t washed, eaten, or changed my clothes. Two back toward the house and I remembered the hospitality I had been shown, the trinkets still (presumably) buried in the depths of my pack. Throwing caution to the wind I set off in search of repayment for my erstwhile hosts.

The sun overhead (and the butterfly-vague shimmer of the Border to the north) guided me west, then north along the curve of the street past a sign painted in human script with the word “Lettertown.” I turned a corner, then another, then a third, and caught my breath. Along the bank of a deep, stone-lined ditch flowing Mad River crimson stood rows upon rows of market stalls that put the swamp traders’ boats with their crates of downriver fish and cloth to shame. In front of me stood a solid mass of flowers, everything from tiny blooms of white lace to blown tangles of crimson, sunset and indigo so bright that I was forced to glance away toward another stall boasting ice-packed crates of glittering fish set there like silver on diamonds. I recognized a few Mad River denizens and the stunted eels fished from the deeper swamp waterways but in general I could not have named five together. I stared from them to the flowers to several more booths sporting what I imagined were fruits and vegetables, some more recognizable than others, before quickly shutting my mouth which I suddenly realized had been hanging open. More or less at random I turned toward one of the stalls of fruits and vegetables, presided over by a human woman with her feet up on the counter and browsing a book titled _Elven Commentaries on the_ Metamorphoses. She sported the light brown skin some humans had, especially following time in the sun, and short hair in a variety of warm, bright shades. “Help you?” she asked with a smile and only a quick blink at my appearance.

“I…” I swallowed hard, staring at rows of deep purple grapes and tiny, white strawberries as enchanting as they were fragrant. “What can I buy for this much Realm silver?” I asked, digging the second-smallest of my earrings from the concealed inner flap of my pack. The fine carnelian teardrop set in the center caught the morning light, and the seller’s interest.

“Are you new in town, by any chance?” she asked.

My cheeks flamed. “Is it so plain?”

“Don’t worry about it. We all started somewhere around here.” From under her carved wood stool she produced a large, if flimsy-looking white bag made of what felt like human plastic. “Fill it up. I’ll tell you when you’re getting close.”

I set to work, the seller elaborating on the finer points of each item on her table until my head echoed with _heirloom_ and _tart_ and _a lot better if you cook it first._ I set the earring on the table before her with my thanks. “Since you’re new, don’t forget to hit the Dancing Ferret for a free beer from Mister Din,” I heard her call after me as I turned toward the next booth.

Hours passed and I made my way along the canal marveling and resisting the lure of the fish market solely on the basis of never having persuaded anyone to teach me how to prepare fish. A bag of fruits and vegetables lay under one arm and a purely impulsive spray of folks' gloves—smaller and darker red than the ones that bloomed near my mother’s home, but one of the few comforting reminders of the Realm I had thus far found—in the opposite hand, and I swung the former back and forth from the crook of my arm as I walked. Following a moment of panic as I vainly searched for the way I had come, I spied a rust-pocked metal sign with the legend ‘Carnival Street’ standing to one side of the first flower stall I had come upon and turned onto it with my various burdens.

The street was long, more twisting than I had remembered from my early morning sojourn and soon I found myself standing to one side of a particularly run-down, red section of the Mad River canal. It was then that I saw the two humans approaching. They looked young and could have been of either sex in the rags they wore, and the looks in their eyes, taking my measure as I stepped closer as if I had been a hunted rabbit, portended nothing good. I turned on my heel with the intent of retracing my steps, asking someone for directions toward the obviously more complicated location of my potential home, and stepped straight into the path of the stout stick swung by yet a third human behind me.

The blow was glancing but the pain was enough to render realistic my collapse to the ground in the unresisting swoon I had perfected in my cousin’s house. The blow sang in my ears past the throbbing, thundering pain that radiated outward from my left temple where I could already feel a knot to rival anything I had ever suffered growing. Vaguely, I felt my assailant step over me, mud-grimed boot brushing my leg, to empty the contents of my pack unceremoniously onto the street. “Fuck, look at this! Real silver, it’s got to be!” I heard one say over the pounding. “Bet we could get a good deal on this velvet at Trader’s Heaven, too.”

“What _is_ he?” another voice said. “Half black half elf or something?”

“Nah. I knew a halfie who was part black and she was just regular brown. Not, like… grey,” the first voice replied over a rustle of my clothing. “Is he dead or what?”

“I dunno. Throw him in the canal and we can check the rest of this stuff out.”

Through my slitted eyes I saw the stick-wielder approach, and with him a blind, unthinking panic. Scrambling to my feet I took off at a dead run back up the street. Shouts of indignation followed me, quickly dying even as I realized that the bag full of my purchases was still looped around my wrist, and I clutched it to myself as if its nearer presence was the only thing that would save me. My feet in their most practical boots with their traces of swamp mud struck the hard black street, spots swam before my eyes and it took me long moments of running before, bracing myself against a wall against a roaring tide of blackness rising up around the edges of my vision, I realized I could see the outskirts of the market once again. A glance back over my shoulder revealed that my pursuers were gone; presumably satisfied with the possessions I had left behind.

_A mother’s legacy squandered for a son’s idiocy,_ the voice of my failure hissed inside my head and I sunk to my knees, bag clutched pathetically to my chest. Perhaps the ruined house I had occupied the night before was still unclaimed. Perhaps I could bargain whatever remained of the food for one more night at the Palace and look for gainful work in the meanwhile. Perhaps I could find my ostensible guide once again and make my way back across the Border to my cousin’s home, tail between my legs.

“Um. Hey, what’s wrong?” I glanced up into the concerned face of the human who had sold me the food, only to wince at the alarm and pity that fell across her face at the state of my own. “Holy shit, what happened?”

“I…” I remembered those I had met last night, imagined their confusion (no doubt mixed with joy) at my sudden absence, then remembered the makeshift bed I had left unmade with no chambermaid to turn down the sheets in my absence. “Could you tell me the way to 40 Carnival Street?”


	2. Chapter 2

“Is it that green one there?” my erstwhile guide asked, and I nodded. The spells of translation laid at the Gate seemed to be holding strong judging by the lack of abject confusion from the humans I had interacted with so far. Still, staying as quiet as possible had behooved me in the Realm and I intended to keep the habit. “Cool. Just please, don’t go too far east toward Riverside without a big group. Wharf Rats usually aren’t dangerous if you look like you might prove any kind of threat whatsoever but if you’re on your own…”

“Yes. Of course,” I hastily interrupted. “Thank you.”

“Come around next time you’re in Letterville. I’m Evan, by the way,” she replied, extending a hand in the human manner. I grasped it briefly, unsure of what else to do, and she raised and lowered hers before letting mine go. “Short for Evanesce. It’s a long story,” she replied at my apparent look of confusion.

“Ah. Goblin,” I replied, and stepped away towards the door. “Please, go back to your stand. I’ll be all right.” With a cautious but encouraging nod, Evan turned back toward whence we had come and I stepped up to the door to knock.

For a long, horrible moment no answer came and I imagined an empty house, or worse, those inside ignoring the dirty, beaten ingrate on their doorstep. The sound of a light step to my right set my nerves singing once again and I turned, clutching the bag like a shield, to see a woman of the Blood dressed in a simple linen tunic and leggings and with strands of true silver hair stuck to her forehead with perspiration. “Forgive me, I am called Goblin,” I blurted before I could lose my nerve. “I slept here last night and I—“

“I believe I know who you are. Darel and the Magus told us to keep a watch for you after you vanished this morning,” she replied. Her voice was strong, with a ring of the Realm to it that my other new acquaintances of the Blood had lacked. “They were concerned that their hospitality had offended you somehow.”

“No! Please, forgive me! I had gone out this morning in search of food to repay them—you—for that hospitality, but I was waylaid and had my things stolen—well, except the food, so if I might barter it for another night here…” My babbling trailed off into silence at the maid’s bemused look.

“You were… it looks as though you were more than _waylaid_ ,” she said, stepping forward to inspect the knot bulging on my temple. “You said your things were stolen?”

“Yes, by a group of… that woman who helped me back here called them… I forget now. Humans who drink from the Mad River.”

“Wharf Rats? The Hunt take those drooling wretches! Sit,” she commanded me, throwing open the front door and leading me to a seat near the window. Her fingers were suddenly soft on my jaw as she turned my face toward the light, looking deeply into my eyes before passing her fingers over the bump with a gentle touch that nonetheless made me wince. “This, at least, seems trivial. Painful, but trivial. Are you hurt otherwise?”

“No. Well, a few scrapes, but nothing more,” I replied, only now raising the arm I had fallen on to see a trickle of blood seeping from my wrist to stain the grimed cuff of my shirt. _My one remaining shirt._ “My clothes,” I said aloud, voice hollow. “Everything of my mother’s. My damned folks’ gloves.”

The anger that flashed across my new-found healer’s face made me regret having said anything. “They’ll be halfway to the nearest trader with anything that might be of value by now, no doubt. If you show me where they waylaid you we could—“

“No!” I hadn’t meant to shout it, but the room rang with it like the kind of spell I could hardly have performed in the Realm, let alone with the strange and tangled magic past the Border. “No. Please. If you’re right it wouldn’t avail anything, and you and the others have shown me enough kindness so far that I would not be in the debt of this house any more than I already am.”

Her eyes locked with mine. “Hush, and listen to me,” she said with a vehemence that surprised me. “If you are to survive in this ridiculous town, particularly here in Soho, the first thing you must learn is that everything works differently here, even debts. Particularly debts. Anyone who can’t help themselves is helped by others with the understanding that they'll help others in turn, whether or not it's those who helped them originally. It's not a perfect system, but it's held Soho together since the Return." She regarded my swollen, sunlight-limned face with a critical eye. "If you do come recommended then you’ve clearly done someone close to us a service and none of us would spurn that. Now put that food in the kitchen and come with me. I know where we can find you some serviceable clothes and hopefully some treatment for that goose’s egg.”

At a loss for words, I followed her into the small room I had seen last night, helping her load my market purchases into a large, white chest filled with half-melted blocks of ice. All my apples were bruised and a box of the white strawberries that Evan had told me came from the Nevernever were crushed beyond use but otherwise the food seemed serviceable. “Thank you,” I finally managed as she scooped up a smaller piece of ice in a clean rag from the nearby table, indicating that I hold it to my temple. “I’ve just realized that I don’t know what to call you.”

“Queen of Swords is what most here call me. The humans I first stayed with began it and it lingered,” she told me, turning to face me once again. In profile she was less lovely than I had first thought her, chin weak and her features overly sharp, but the interrogating intensity with which she seemed to regard everything was enough of a distraction that I had hardly noticed. “And it’s scarcely a problem. I have an appointment that takes me past there in any case… oh, speaking of which.” She strode from the kitchen, taking the adjoining flight of stairs several at once before returning perhaps a minute later with a plain but obviously well-kept sword girded around her waist. “Sparring practice in Dragontown,” she said at my curious glance. “It’s just across the canal from the Carmine Street Diggers. You’re welcome to join us if you’re not too knocked about. Do you fence?”

“Er. No. Thank you,” I replied, matching her purposeful stride toward the door and out onto the street while holding the ice to my head. “What is… are the Carmine Street Diggers?”

“The Diggers are a group sworn to aid the less fortunate of Bordertown. The new, the poor, the hopeless, whoever might need such aid. Whichever side they might hail from.” Our path took us along a more populated section of what I imagined was still Carnival Street. On the front step of one house a group of brightly dressed folk passed a bottle of something around to the tune of a fiddle played by one of their number. Outside a building styled Miss Mithril’s Hair and Beauty, a human girl with rich brown skin and yellow silk twined through her braids played a recorder for passers-by. The sun’s light had tinged itself the orange of late afternoon by the time Queen of Swords nodded across the way toward a large, low building mounted with a sign declaring “Digger House.” We stepped through the door into a small entry hall mainly filled by a desk manned by a short, thin woman whose prominently curved nose and soft features suggested some human blood. “Have you no patients to attend, doctor, that you idle your time away here?” Queen of Swords asked, a smile softening the words.

“The usual dozens, but Berlin was called away and told me to mind the desk. We haven’t been this understaffed since the Way reopened,” the woman replied wearily. “What can I help you with, my Queen?”

“My companion requires clothing, and as long as you’re here perhaps you might ensure he’s not concussed? He traveled too far from home and was set upon by the scum of Riverside,” Queen of Swords said, nudging me toward the desk.

The woman stood and, with a questioning look at which I nodded, set about inspecting my face once again with a barrage of questions about what had happened, where, and how. My stammered answers seemed to draw as trivial a picture as Queen of Swords had proclaimed it, and soon she beckoned us toward a door off the main room which opened onto a large storage room filled with clothing, mostly human-styled and threadbare but still eminently usable. “Take what you need. If you need somewhere to crash as well we’re nearly full here but the Water Street branch should have some beds once the two-week crowd turns out,” she told me.

“I… er, no, I believe I have a place to stay,” I replied with a questioning look in the Queen’s direction. She nodded with a half-exasperated, half-amused smile, and I quickly went back to comparing two pairs of the rough blue trousers that most humans seemed to wear. Almost everything was far too large, but between ourselves we turned up two pairs of trousers, a belt made of what looked like rope, a plain green shirt with short sleeves and a jacket made of the blue trouser material and sewn with bright patches of other fabrics. The woman addressed as ‘doctor’ had returned to her desk in the meantime, head bent close over a closely-written ledger of some sort. “Thank you,” I told her, approaching with the clothes clutched to my chest. “You said you needed workers. I have no employment here yet, if you would have me.”

She glanced up. “We always need volunteers, though there aren’t many paid positions. You could eat with the cases but that’s about it unless you have some specific administrative skills.”

I bit my lip but persevered: “I would gladly work here for food. My education is mainly confined to the history of the—“ The by-now familiar wall of silence stilled my tongue before  _the kings and queens_ could pass my lips, and I shook my head hard. “…the history of the Realm, calligraphy, logic and rhetoric, and literature."

“Do you know much about enchantment cantrips?” I shook my head, unwilling to embarrass myself further with an admission of my lack of magical knowledge. “I can’t think of much, unless… you mentioned calligraphy?” She reached into the desk, holding up another ledger written closely with the kind of runic shorthand I recognized from countless mildewed tomes of contract records perused in an absence of anything else to read. “Can you read this script?”

“Yes! And write it as well!” _Obviously, idiot._ “Near half the library of my home was written in runic shorthand. What call do you have for it here?”

“Our old bookkeeper was a casualty to the Border opening back up. A whole lot of noble families have been storming out here to reclaim minor nobility who’ve been gone for the past fourteen-odd years, and apparently someone important wanted her back.” I tried to keep my face neutral as she continued, “For some reason she insisted on keeping all the financial records in this—something about enspelling the incoming donations, or keeping them from being enspelled, we were never quite sure—and since she left no one has been able to make head or tail of the financial records. No one this side of Dragon's Tooth Hill seems to be able to read the stuff so we've been looking for someone to decipher the mess she left behind.”

“I. Well. I’ve never dealt with such things before. Finances, I mean,” I stammered.

“You wouldn’t have to do any of the actual accounting, just get the records of where our donations and purchases have been going for the past few years. A lot’s been lost in the shuffle.” She handed me a small white card with a series of numbers on it that seemed to be a date and time. “As such, the position would be temporary but in the meantime you’d be welcome to use our employment services as well. Drop by tomorrow morning and we can discuss it in depth with the rest of the administration.”

“Yes. Yes, I gladly will. Thank you,” I replied with as deep a bow as would stop shot of ludicrous. “Who should I ask for?”

“I’m Ciara. Ask for me, or Berlin, or Alejandro.” She stood and bowed back to me, the tail of her single long plait brushing the surface of the desk. I thanked her once again and turned to follow Queen of Swords out the door, heart not quite light but less heavy than it had been an hour before.

“You seem to be making friends quickly,” Queen of Swords observed as we stepped out onto the street toward a small footpath over the rushing red tide below us.

“This town seems prone to giving awkward strangers the benefit of the doubt,” I replied. “When its people don’t attack on sight, that is.”

“If you think that anyone here didn’t begin their stay as an awkward stranger then you believe far too many travelers’ second-hand accounts.” She turned to me, reaching into her pocket for a small loop of cloth with which she secured her hair into a single braid. “Now, would you rather I showed you the way back to the Palace or would you care to see the Bordertown way of sparring?”

I weighed the thought of the silent, unfamiliar house against the thought of watching the captivating maid before me locked in a passionate clash of blades and quickly reached a decision.


	3. Chapter 3

The Queen of Swords was breathing heavily and bore the first flush of a bruise under the reddening welt on her upper arm. Her opponent, a short, black-haired human with eyes angled like a Trueblood’s circled her with a wary glance I could only think to compare to the skittish ferocity of a heron or a snipe scrutinizing muddy water for the flicker of a fish. With a lunge and a dive her wooden practice blade snapped forward, straight into empty air where moments before the Queen’s head had lain. Her own blade cut a path through the still air of the room to connect with her opponent’s back with a smack that made me wince. The human—Laura, I remembered—hardly flinched.

“The count of contact is three. Queen of Swords takes the match,” announced the arbiter, half-human and similar in appearance to the Queen’s opponent, and the two bowed.

“These things,” Laura said, making a face at her sparring sword. “Come by the dojo sometime and I’ll really give you a run for your money, Queenie.” The measured literalism of the translation magics afforded me understanding of perhaps half her words, but Queen of Swords’s fierce grin provided all the context I needed.

“So you can trounce me on your own terms? Perhaps when I see water boiled in an eggshell. Or perhaps my sword versus your bare hands if you feel so confident?”

“It’s a plan, then. I’ll tell Koga.” Laura began to gather up her things. “Catch you guys later. Nice meeting you, Goblin.” I nodded deeply in acknowledgement and followed Queen of Swords through the door into the dusk-cooled street beyond.

"That was wonderfully fought," I started to say, only to catch myself just before stumbling over a huddled figure at the far end of the footbridge which I had mistaken for simply a patch of shadow. A pale, dirty human face peered from a tangle of blankets that seemed inadequate to the burgeoning cold. "Spare some change? Coffee beans?" a weak feminine voice asked, and I shook my head slowly.

"All I have are these," I replied, pulling my newly-acquired jacket from my shoulders to proffer it in her direction. The human regarded it but didn't move. "The Diggers keep a haven for those with no home just a street over—"

"The hell do you think I came from? Two weeks sleeping on a concrete floor before they kicked me out and they never helped me find a job or another place or... or anything. Forget it." She turned her back toward us, muttering something further about fucking clueless elves as Queen of Swords steered me away toward the corner furthest from the canal.

"That was generous," she remarked. "Any more generosity and you'll have every stray in the city begging your largess, though."

"I have clothes, and a place to sleep." The protest sounded petulant, even to me. "I can easily look for more clothing when I return to the Diggers tomorrow. Should I have ignored her?"

"Perhaps not. Still, there are more hard cases in Bordertown than stars in the sky and if you try to give them your all you'll have nothing left of yourself for yourself." She sighed, jerking her chin back toward the bridge. "No matter what she claimed, if Ciara and the rest do take you on I'm sure that will do more than all the alms you could possibly give."

I decided not to press the point even as the waif's face lingered in my mind's eye. "You seemed to know Ciara well. Did you stay with the Diggers when you arrived?"

"No, I met her when she was still working at the Ho Street Church Clinic. A lot of our dueling matches once ended with at least one combatant being treated for a sprain or a blow to the head before most of us began to train in earnest, and she was usually the one to treat our wounds."

Despite my discomfiture we were animatedly discussing the workings of the fencing society's matches (Queen of Swords providing most of the finer points, me listening and asking the occasional question) as we approached the doors of the Palace. We stepped through the door into the candlelit dimness I remembered from the night before only for me to jump half out of my skin at the sudden sharp demand: “You found him? Where in Mab’s name was he?”

Queen of Swords raised her gaze briefly toward the ceiling as her interlocutor—Darel, I remembered—rose from another game of cards, this one with another Trueblood, impeccably dressed in threadbare but clean garments of the Realm similar to Darel’s. I considered stammering out some sort of explanation, but years of mitigating conflict condensed it into “I got lost. Forgive me.”

“He had ventured out to find repayment for our hospitality,” Queen of Swords began, interposing herself between us. The sarcastic tone of the word "hospitality" drew a scowl from Darel who stood from the table with a glare at both of us.

“A simple offer of thanks instead of a disappearance would have taken you much farther here," he replied, and I looked away with a murmur of apology. “Is that food in the kitchen your doing?”

“Yes,” I said, eyes still respectfully averted.

“Well enough, though next time you might buy something less perishable. If you would truly count yourself in our debt then so much fresh would push you far into the reverse.”

“Darel, hush. He’s hurt and needs rest,” Queen of Swords snapped.

At Darel’s incredulous look the story came out for what felt like the hundredth time, my self-consciousness growing with every throb of my still-smarting head. “And that is exactly why it would have behooved you to have waited,” he said with a hard edge to his voice that froze me in place. “There is a way things are done in Soho, as surely as either side of the Border, and I would suggest that you become familiar with them before you attempt travel toward Riverside again. Or, indeed, anywhere else.”

“And have one of you accompany me at all times?” My frustrated cry cut short whatever riposte Queen of Swords had been about to offer. “I could never ask that of any of you, and you are the only people I know in Bordertown, let alone Soho itself! If you would care to escort me to my new employment with the Diggers tomorrow I would hardly know whether to be flattered or insulted but I am entirely sure you have better things to do!” I wasn’t sure if Darel’s gaping was due to my mention of employment or my outburst more generally, but I felt a stab of vindictive pleasure at the incredulity of his expression regardless.

“I told you he was stronger than we could have gathered from a few minutes’ talk.” The statement came from the Magus, who had appeared across the room near the stairs with his arms full of complicated-looking diagrams swimming with moving rows of runes and human script. Darel turned the full force of his disapproving glare on him but the Magus ignored him, sweeping past both of us towards the couch beyond us. “In any case, now that the regulars are here perhaps we can discuss your continued presence at the Palace.”

It looked to me as though discussion was the last thing on Darel and Queen of Swords’s minds, but they grudgingly pulled up chairs alongside the third Trueblood who was introduced as Tàl. The discussion played out as a slightly longer version of the one from the previous night, accompanied by a certain amount of clarification about the nature of the lodgings. Like so many other Soho squats this one seemed to operate as something between a cooperative and a communally rented house in the human style. In the absence of any sort of landowner or proprietor the house’s core occupants determined who might occupy such a coveted dwelling, the criteria mainly hinging on personal cleanliness, respect for the space of others, and self-sufficiency as far as belongings and food went. The word of Runner, the silvery shadow who still lurked on the edges of my memory, seemed to carry sufficient weight, and soon I was following Queen of Swords up the stairs into a small, shabby but clean room furnished with a bed, a twin of the threadbare armchair downstairs, and little else. What I assumed was an electric lamp hung from the ceiling but the only light came from a few brightly-glowing signs outside the window advertising nightlife.

“Don’t let Darel tear you down. He was born here, up in Elftown, but likes to act like he’s the properest mother’s son either side of the Border,” she told me, setting a lit candle from the supply downstairs onto the peeling windowsill. “Back in the Realm his family was some sort of honor guard for the Court and they never let him forget it.”

“Why would they possibly have come here, then?” I blurted, every bit the poor idiot raised on secondhand tales of his own lineage. _And why thee, goblin’s child?_

“Exile, better opportunities away from the Court, the usual stories. Perhaps they had a lead on the lost heir to the throne. Who knows?” She draped the red blanket from the previous night over the bed and stepped back. “There’s a basin and tap across the hall but if you want the water hot you’ll need to do it yourself. Help yourself to anything in the cabinet. I’m working early tomorrow but if you do need someone to show you the way back to the Digger House it’s on Magus’s way to the University.”

“The Magus works at the University Without Floors? And he lives in a squat in Soho?”

The amusement in Queen of Swords’s eyes made me internally kick myself once again. “You misjudge the respect afforded scholars on this side of the Border. Also he’s apparently working on some kind of grand treatise about the use of magic in Soho and feels that immersing himself in it helps."

“I see,” I replied. In the ensuing silence Queen of Swords inclined her head and stepped into the hall with the instruction that I come to her (across the hall) or the Magus (up one flight) if I wanted for anything. I nodded and proceeded across the hall, making my ablutions and applying a small jar of what smelled like tansy paste to my wounds before retreating to my bed with my unfamiliar-smelling but clean new clothes for a pillow.

 _I had crossed the Border._ The thought had struck me before, at the Letterville market, as I watched Queen of Swords duel a human clad in bright yellow leather and sparkling black boots, but now the thought throbbed repeatedly through my head past the soothing of the tansy. _I’ve left the Realm. (Now what?) I’ve left the Realm. (Now what?)_ This was where the tales that had carried even to my disgraced cousin’s corner of nowhere had led, the escape, the adventure, and then… what? A happy end to the tale? Temporary work, a town full of those more wretched than I had ever been, and a house full of folk so mysterious hardly seemed like any sort of ending at all.

_“It’s a tale like any other. Take oak, ash and thorn, be kind to whomever you meet, and never assume that anything is as it seems. If you remember only one thing—“_

_“Will I remember you?”_

_“What? Why?”_

_“You helped me, and I would fain remember that.”_

_“Perhaps. The Border crossing does strange things to memory. Just remember, nothing may be as it seems. Now go. Go!”_

My eyes flickered open, the fragment of dream dispersing nearly as abruptly as it had overtaken me. Unsettled, I shifted onto my other side, away from the bright reflection of the word "DANCELAND" in the window, and waited for sleep to claim me once again.


	4. Chapter 4

The miasma of apprehension, impatience and hope fogging my head kept me sleeping in fits and starts until the sky outside my window turned the color of ashes and I resignedly stepped from my bed, dressed myself in my new clothing, and descended the stairs. In the kitchen the Magus sat alone at the table over some of the previous night’s diagrams with a cup of something hot and one of the previous day’s apples sliced onto bread. “Tea?” he asked, reaching for the gently steaming teapot with a stretch of his arm that revealed several holes in the wool of his sleeve.

“Yes. Thank you.” It seemed to be some sort of tisane involving yarrow, rosehips and a pungent leaf I didn’t know. “Queen of Swords told me your way is the same as mine this morning. May I walk with you?” I asked, stepping to the chest of ice and taking an apple of my own.

“Of course, if you don’t mind waiting a moment. We—my research partner and I—have some readings to check.” He rose and stepped into the common room over to the prism-and-lens device near the window. I followed, observing as he noted down what seemed to be the angles of each piece with the help of a of a weighted line hanging from a central metal bar before corroborating them with the ones I had seen at the table and scribbling a few notes in what looked like some kind of human script on the new page. Pages in hand, he pushed open the front door, only for his eyes to meet mine. Realizing I had been staring, I turned away with a hurried apology.

“It’s quite all right. You’re welcome to observe, though I fear it won’t be especially interesting.” He passed onto the front step to where a similar object hung from the eaves, angled down the street toward where buildings still glowed with electricity and spellfire against the grey early morning sky. A young human stood under it, adjusting the angles minutely as we approached. She was dressed no more oddly than most I had encountered save for the oak leaves arranged into a mask that covered her face, though not entirely hiding the red, inflamed protuberances and craters that marked her skin. “Good morning, Magus,” she said, continuing to note formulae into the leather-bound tome she cradled in one arm before catching sight of me.

“Maris,” the Magus replied with a nod. “This is Goblin, late of the Realm and currently staying at the Palace. Goblin, Maris, my acting research partner.” On his lips the word hurled at me by my cousin in his drunken rages took on a soft, oddly affectionate cadence and I felt a strange, buoyant feeling in my chest with each repetition.

I bowed. “Well met. May I ask what exactly do they do?” I said, curiosity finally overcoming timidity.

The Magus adjusted the angle of a few glass shavings, shoving his spectacles absentmindedly up the narrow bridge of his nose. “What do you know of how magic works in Bordertown?”

“Well. It doesn’t, especially well. Or any of the humans’ devices from the World. Something about how the Realm and the World fit together.”

“My work at the University is to measure that fit; the thaumaturgical ebb and flow throughout the Border. Particularly here in Soho where the population is forced to rely on such innovative magical and technological solutions for day-to-day living here where utilities are so few and far between.” He beckoned me around the side of the house into a tiny fenced plot, mostly weeds and bare earth, with what looked like a fire pit in one corner and a third device hanging from the remains of an oak tree in the center. Maris trailed behind us, circling around to compare a list of figures from the front step with those on another page. “By studying the particular patterns of the magic of Soho, the backup spellboxes and the jury-rigged heating charms and the scrying attempts that show the next street over as often as the Realm, it is our hope to identify exactly how the fluctuations in magical energy happen. We keep these devices here, as well as various other places we have been allowed to place them, for purposes of measuring those fluctuations.” The calculations on his sheaves of paper grew longer and more complicated, both via his pen and his ink’s apparent continuation of the written equations. “Shall we proceed? Refuse goes there; we take it to the scrapyard near Tintown once a week,” he said, indicating a large barrel into which I tossed my apple core.

“What is it that you think causes those fluctuations?” I asked in the absence of any more intelligent questions. We turned in the direction of the nightlife, taking an abrupt left up a street lined with walls painted with writhing, sparkling configurations of Trueblood glyphs, or grotesque faces, or in one case a long, coiling serpent in the colors of summer that seemed to follow our progress for some streets before dispersing into cracks in a blue shop facade.

“It’s something like tectonic plates, if you know what those are,” Maris said. I shook my head. “It… well. I’m sure you know about the weak points that existed before any of this between the two worlds. Points of space, like fairy rings and certain parts of the world, and time, like the equinoxes and solstices. Now, obviously a certain amount of chaos where one natural order meets another occurs between the two realms even at those set points. The most common is time distortion, of course, the sort of thing that causes time to pass much faster or slower, which can result in things like the close of the Way. Thirteen years pass on either side, thirteen days pass here in Bordertown." She ran two hands through her bone-bleached hair, eyes shining through the negative space around four separate oak leaf lobes. "But with the prolonged exposure here at the Border it becomes something like two land masses grinding together to create an earthquake, or charged particles colliding in a thundercloud. Pressure—or something like it—builds up where they meet and is occasionally released in small ways, like everyday cantrips and electronics malfunctioning, or much bigger ways, like the rearrangement of streets and even entire neighborhoods from time to time."

"It's one theory, at any rate," the Magus added. "Our research data is only a small part of a study of the interactions of the two worlds, and within the field there are a variety of opinions." Behind his spectacles the creases of his eyes deepened with his smile. "All we can do is endeavor to understand to a point where hopefully all of them—including us—will be proven wrong and we can truly begin to understand things."

***

By the time we reached the Carmine Street Diggers’ building I had to have it gently pointed out to me by the Magus past Maris’s enthusiastic description of their work in relation to some sort of communication network called BINGO. I bade them both goodbye before biting my lip hard and stepping through the door. The sight of the room from the previous day greeted me, opening onto a large, communal space beyond where I saw Ciara standing next to a tall, dark-haired human, both of them staring resignedly at a pool of greyish water that stretched from that door to another set at the far side of the room. It was a long room. "Just empty everything into the vats for now," Ciara was saying with the air of one used to minor crises, ignoring the assortment of downtrodden-looking Soho youth—human, Trueblood and halfblood alike— who had gathered around to stare at the soapy-smelling water. "I'll send for Jimmy, if he's around. If not then you can start heating some water for the next load so we can at least finish today." She turned to look past me toward the door, only to catch sight of me hovering there. "Ah, Goblin. There are two mops and a bucket in the closet to your right. Could you bring them here, please?"

I eagerly fumbled the instruments in question out of the closet to Ciara, who handed them off to two young halfbloods who might have been brother and sister. "What happened?" I asked.

"The washing machine flooded. The charms are unreliable at the best of times—careful, not so close to the wall sockets, those still work sometimes—and it's a gamble whether our backup generator will work on any given day." She beckoned me back toward the room whence the water had come where the dark human was dragging dripping heaps of clothing from a large, white metal box into a wheeled tub nearby. "I need to find our repairman and then get back to the infirmary, but Alejandro here will give you the orientation talk. Just start by helping him move these clothes."

After thoroughly soaking ourselves with the wet clothes, shooing inquisitive and occasionally helpful occupants away from the door and a flash and a spark from a splash of water in the other room which left one of the siblings cursing but unharmed, the next several hours passed in a flood of new facts—how I would be paid, (mainly in kind) my expected duties, (serving food, laundering donated clothing and orientating new visitants in addition to the overhaul of the accounts) what to do if trouble from gangs arose (alert one of them and if worst came to worst take up the broadsword hidden under the counter, Alejandro assured me mostly jokingly.) The account books were kept in several large cabinets in a back office, written in the close shorthand I recognized from the dryly written records of ancient pacts and feuds I recognized from the library of my cousin’s house ( _home,_ a perverse voice whispered, though through the years I had lived there I had never once thought of it so.) After assuring my new employers that I would be able to quickly decipher the accounts, the workings of the front desk were explained to me, (“check everyone in with a name and a date, make sure they understand the rules, and if they give you trouble then get one of us”) and appraised of the laundry powered by the aforementioned unreliable combination of electric power and simple kinetic charms that I made a mental note to mention to the Magus.

In the time that had passed, a dull clamor had grown from the main room which a number of occupants, under the guidance of Ciara, had filled with tables and whither Alejandro and I adjourned to a table near the far wall. For the next stretch of time we portioned hard bread rolls and some sort of watery stew involving cabbage and potatoes into the bowls of the current occupants, most of whom complained at the fare but all of whom consumed it eagerly. (Some few glanced twice at my appearance, some stared openly, but occasional quelling glances from Alejandro seemed to keep anyone from commenting outright.) Following this, some of their number adjourned to wash the dishes in large, unheated tubs as Alejandro explained to me about the allocation of chores between residents as demarcated on a chart on the wall. (I thought I saw the ostensibly unwelcome human from the prior night stacking dried tumblers onto a rack and bit my lip, but the pale face and lank hair I remembered could have belonged to half the humans in Soho.) Ciara, who had hurried off to tend to the split lip and black eye of a human too free in his description of men of the Blood, rejoined us at this point to aid in the dish-washing while I applied myself once again to the books.

It was more difficult than it had seemed at first blush. As with any True script worth such a name the context meant everything, one graceful mark in the erstwhile scribe’s hand feeding into another to create a mosaic of meaning: numerals twining with statements that might have been rhyming lines of personal names, or lists of goods donated by wealthy humans and Truebloods alike, or both merged into one. If this was meant to prevent magical entanglement, I reflected ruefully, the slippery words did well deflecting basic understanding as well. My progress was humiliatingly slow but from the memories of moldering volumes perused for want of anything else to do I set aside three relatively neat pages of semi-translated lists of monetary donations at the end of the day, bid the remaining Diggers staff a courteous goodbye with yet more thanks for my new position, and made my way out the door.

The walk home was much less eventful than that of the previous day, spelled out in a series of landmarks—here the tree with glass bottles fitted over its outlying twigs, there the red-painted house with a two-wheeled, motored vehicle of the kind that seemed so popular on the Border chained to a post outside, there a beautiful gate of wrought iron squeezed between two buildings too dilapidated for even the desperate to consider squatting in. As dusk fell I pushed open the door of the Palace to reveal the Magus, Darel, and a third Trueblood sitting comfortably near the fireplace, illuminated by the ubiquitous candles. Heads turned as I stepped through the door. “Ah, Goblin!” the Magus greeted me, rising courteously. "I imagine you remember Runner by now?”

The third Trueblood turned toward me, hair like milkweed down and eyes like the prelude to a storm piercing my memory more effectively than any grasped-at fragments I had clutched at since the Gate had taken them from me. Our last words on the far side of the Elfhame Gate, the flight there through twisting, mud-logged swamp roads, our meeting under the eaves of my cousin’s house, chest heaving for breath, him gasping for aid, shelter, anything…

“Yes,” I replied, voice oddly breathless in my own ears. “Yes, I remember. Well met.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maris originated in Patricia A. McKillip's excellent story "Oak Hill" from _The Essential Bordertown._ As an oddball even by Bordertown standards (set out to study magic, not only managed to find a teacher but also to actually perform magic which is usually the sole purview of elves/Truebloods) I figured she would be a good counterpoint to the oddball that is the Magus.


	5. Chapter 5

“My only question,” Runner said, taking a sip from the glass jar of someone’s elderflower cordial that the recently-returned Queen of Swords had brought from the kitchen, “is where on earth everyone else is. Last time I was here I remember more women. And Second, at least.” His return seemed to have predicated a festive atmosphere with every resident of the house (including a surprisingly scowl-less Darel) gathered on chairs pulled around the couch. At the center of attention sat Runner, his packs laden with goods and correspondence from the Realm set at his feet, engaging everyone in conversation with an easy grace for the hours we had all been sat there. My every glance at him made my heart leap with the memory of our last, fraught meeting which had so worked its way into my dreams, but no reaction crossed his face even as our eyes occasionally met.

“Isaol lives on Dragon’s Tooth Hill now, cooking and cleaning for that family who hired her. Echo apparently now manages one of the most luxurious hostelries in Gryphon Park. And Second…” A pained look passed briefly over the Magus’s face, one I might have missed had the cordial not relaxed me enough to look past my own concerns for once. “…went to study elsewhere, as of a few months back."

"I hope you are not accusing those who live in stable, non-crowded Soho accommodations of... what is it the humans say? Settling out?" Queen of Swords cut in with a small smile. I thought of the Digger House accommodations, dozens upon dozens of those with nowhere else to go packed against each other in thin bedrolls over a thin carpet, and felt a stab of guilt.  _If_ _you try to give them your all you'll have nothing left of yourself,_ her voice sounded in my head, and I pushed the thought out of mind.

“Selling out? And no, certainly not.” Runner shook his head quickly. “Apart from anything else, not needing to share a room with multiple others is a definite upside. Of course, if Goblin is in my usual room I’ll gladly sleep here—“

“No, please! I hardly have anything stored there and you’re a far more permanent and necessary tenant. Besides, what if your things were stolen?” I said quickly, cheeks flushed with what I hoped was simple embarrassment for the imposition and not from my sudden mental image of milkweed-hued hair fanned across the dark sheets.

“Thefts so far along Carnival Street proper are rare, though your concern is unquestionably appreciated,” Runner replied with a flicker of something in his pale eyes that made my cheeks flame anew. “I would imagine, however, that there is a third way involving me recanting my statement regarding room-sharing.”

I was not entirely sure how what form my eager agreement had taken but within moments of bidding the rest of the house goodnight I found myself sequestered into the second-floor room with Runner who shut the door tightly behind us both. “How do you fare?” he asked with no further preamble. “When I left you at the gate they were asking questions. I only counted us both lucky that no one seems to know what you truly look like.”

“No one seems to have recognized me yet. Perhaps they simply aren’t looking. Or can’t speak of it enough to find out,” I replied, picking at the coverlet with nervous fingers. “What I can and cannot speak of, and to whom, seems so arbitrary. And my memory, as well! I remember my cousin’s house and my own… significance, but my journey here, my passage, what I should fear…”

“I’m sure you’ve heard by now that the crossing can do strange things to memory as well as talk of matters past the Border.” From a compartment of his neatly organized larger pack Runner produced some sort of strange-looking tubular green blanket which he spread across the chair, holding up a hand at the beginning of my protest. “Are you sure no one has taken notice?”

“You speak as if I were the lost Heir herself. Was the Border guard so thorough?”

“They... must have been, yes. In ensorcelling me, if nothing else I tried to describe my path across to an Elftown resident on my way here and began instead telling a story about a stolen human with a rose in her mouth.” He looked up from his progress with a crooked smile. “At least you can be assured that I could not speak of your whereabouts to any potential searchers on this side.”

“I never would have considered such a thing even if I imagined anyone might search for me.” I swallowed hard. "You did not have to help me like this, even for offering you hospitality. Thank you."

Runner shook his head. "You're welcome, but you're also wrong. It was the only way I possibly could have repaid you."

***

When I awoke the next morning, Runner was gone from the chair and his precious burdens with him. I dressed, washed, nodded goodbye to the Magus who stood in animated conversation with Maris on the front porch and made my way toward the Digger House where the single working furnace had caused a minor disturbance the previous night by continuously filling the air with plumes of odd-smelling green smoke. Not long after my arrival it was repaired by Ciara herself, who seemed to possess more magic than I might ever have dreamed of despite her mixed blood, and I settled down to a day of more confusingly-worded lists of clothing donations, a large vat of cheese-covered bits of boiled, unleavened dough for the evening’s meal, and more strange looks.

“If anyone's spoken rudely to you about your appearance that's against Digger policy and they would be reprimanded,” Ciara told me at my hundredth such flinch of the day as we stacked dry dishes together before my return home.

I shook my head. “No one has, and most insults would hardly smart in any case. When he was in his cups my guardian used to tell me I would have been better switched for a human child to let them contend with my hideousness.” The casual lightness I had intended transmuted itself to bitterness in my mouth and I cringed in anticipation of pity or even agreement writ large over her face.

“It sounds like he would have been better suited to have snakes and toads fall from his lips with every word if he put so much store in improbable stories,” she replied, expression neutral but words clearly heartfelt.

“There were precedents—“ I began, thinking of the close-scrawled lists of human children taken to the Realm that I had read, wondering who they might have been and if anyone missed them still, before once again feeling the wall of silence still my tongue. “Forgive me. Precedents for the exchange of ugly, goblin-blooded children, at any rate.”

Ciara's eyes narrowed. "You're not ugly by any metric, Goblin. Though I didn't know your name was literal."

“My mother had goblin blood and that was as far as I was allowed to know,” I replied with a nervous glance out of the kitchen.

“I see. Forgive me for prying.”

“I was the one who brought the subject up. There is nothing to forgive. Good night.” Placing a final dry cup onto a shelf I beat a hasty retreat through the door, too discomfited to care what route I took away from the Digger House. It was only a few blocks from home that I heard the now-familiar voice: “Be cautious walking toward the north there. The Rune Lords don’t stray so far from Carnival Place often but occasionally the bolder ones enjoy starting trouble near here."

I jerked my head around to see Runner emerging from a run-down yellow house, a bag of what looked like coffee beans clutched in one hand and his much less full pack dangling from one shoulder. “Who are the Rune Lords?” I asked, throwing my usual caution regarding idiotic, obvious questions to the wind.

Runner blinked with a butterfly-like movement of his long, pale lashes but didn’t laugh. “They're a halfblood gang. Not large, but more dangerous than they're credited with. Has no one spoken to you of the gangs yet?”

“I… a few, mainly the Diggers. It’s only been three days,” I replied, ears defensively pinned.

“I might have made it a week. That explains a lot,” Runner replied thoughtfully. “Once we make our way home I’ll gladly tell you of what groups to avoid. The general rule is to avoid Chrystoble and Ho streets and avoid speaking of them to Darel at all costs."

“Why Darel?”

Runner appeared to struggle with his better nature for a moment before replying, “Darel used to run with the Bloods, the most prominent Trueblood gang in Soho. It seems to have been tied up with his upbringing in Elftown under parents who idealized the True and Only Realm far more than anyone who ever lived there would dream of doing, an attitude the Bloods embrace to the point of violence against anyone not provably of the Blood. His loyalties lay with them for some years and he regrets it dearly now. Not that I tell you this to gossip." He smiled crookedly. “My gossip usually costs far more. Only because it’s the single subject I’ve ever seen him lose his composure over in all the time I’ve known him. Even mentioning the Bloods in his presence can lead to people getting punched, and I would hate to see that happen to you.”

I filed the information away with everything else to be processed once I might catch my figurative breath. “I’ll remember that. Thank you. Where do the rest of these gangs hold court?”

Runner regarded me with a critical eye. “That would take close to an evening in itself to explain. Are you too weary for some slight carousing?”

“Carousing? I… what did you have in mind?” I asked, scanning his face for any hint of ironic amusement.

“Well, if in the past three days you haven’t made your way to the Dancing Ferret yet I imagine you have a free beer with your name on it.” His smile made my heart beat strangely, as if for a moment it had grown wings. “I should stop by the Palace to drop these things off, but after that…”

***

The main room of the Dancing Ferret was a louder, more vibrant place than I fancied I had ever seen. In one corner a group of humans and two halfbloods played Realm and World tunes alike on spellbox-augmented lutes to the surrounding masses of brightly dressed Soho folk, the vast majority of whom seemed to both know Runner and have nothing but praise for his organized, skillful navigation of goods and messages between the Realm and the Border. Farrel Din, a fat, personable man of the Blood who presided from behind the bar like an Oberon or a Herne, took one look at my discomposure and slid a glass each to me and Runner, waving off the payment Runner proffered for one drink. “You’ve still got credit for those letters last month, kid,” he told Runner, who thanked him graciously and led us to an abandoned corner table still sporting numerous empty glasses. He nudged these to one side before producing a sheaf of paper from the smaller but no less meticulously arranged leather bag he had switched his larger pack for at the Palace. The folds parted to reveal a spider’s web of multicolored inks that after a moment I resolved into a map of the city. Colors that seemed randomly distributed took the shape of neighborhoods and boundaries, carefully laying out the web of streets that drew the young and disaffected in as surely as flies.“Did you draw this yourself? It’s beautiful. And useful,” I told Runner, who in the dim pub light seemed almost to blush.

“I did, yes. Thank you." He tapped the surface and the map reconfigured itself, some streets meeting others, the colors that demarcated groups and loyalties ebbing and encroaching, and I only belatedly realized that I was smiling at the sight, glass halfway to my lips as I studied the layout of my new home. _Home,_ the voice echoed once again, and this time, even so few days since I had passed the Elfhame Gate, the word seemed apt. "It’s a useful thing to have, even knowing this particular configuration well. Having a record of what’s gone before, from gangs to entire neighborhoods, is undeniably useful for those who would see how this place works,”

“Like the Magus?”

“Like the Magus, yes. Now, here along Chrystoble Street is a key area for Truebloods to avoid— the Pack runs there and they’re all humans who seek to keep their own safe from our sinister designs.” Runner’s explanation was far more concise than he had credited himself with and following his elegant, pale finger across the map left me with a better command of where I lived than I had hoped to possess by the moon’s turn. “Are you this knowledgeable in all things?” I asked, following a brief pause in his description of the Dead Warlocks. “I imagine you could do my new work better than I can.”

This time I was entirely sure a slight tinge of pink crept over Runner’s face. “Your work with the Diggers, you mean? Have you risen to power in their ranks so soon?”

I briefly outlined my new duties with a few words toward the difficulty of deciphering the ever-shifting meanings of the accounts. “If you had any command of such things I might ask for your guidance in deciphering what the city's castoffs have to… to tell me, I suppose. But I imagine you have better things to do before you leave for the Realm once again,” I concluded.

“As soon as I have living arrangements that don’t infringe on yours I intend to stay for some time,” Runner replied with a sip of the thick, loamy-smelling ale before him. “If you or the Diggers require any kind of help that I can give I’ll gladly help while I accumulate further correspondences and wares for my next trip over. It generally takes some time for me to accumulate enough to make that trip worth my while, so I should be here for a month at least.”

The unfamiliar fluttering in my chest had returned, and with a start I realized it was something resembling happiness—happiness tinged with hope. “Please believe me,” I told him, studiously avoiding his gaze, “when I say I don’t mind sharing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Runner's map might look a bit like this one.](http://65.media.tumblr.com/02de1c257cb6cfe0cd21297664b16c8a/tumblr_mgpyanrPzA1rty97po1_500.png) I wish I could take credit for it but it appears to have been drawn by the administrator of a sadly now-defunct Bordertown forum RPG. Also, describing pasta from the point of view of someone who isn't familiar with pasta is surprisingly tricky.


	6. Chapter 6

With a routine established the ensuing weeks took on the feeling of a chaotic but pleasant dream. Most days I rose, dressed myself in an expanding range of mostly World castoffs and followed what I was assured were the safest paths toward Carmine Street where I did whatever needed to be done, receiving pay once a week in small amounts of Bordertown currency as well as food enough to feed myself and occasionally the rest of the Palace. (After I brought one of the books of the accounts home and Runner and I spent the evening puzzling over it together I offered him half my pay, but he refused. "I've hardly done anything but draw your attention to a few magical possibilities. Besides, you know this script far better than a humble messenger," he told me with a kind smile, and I went about my work substantially more heartened the next day.) On days off I walked the streets I knew were safe, marveling at the strangeness of the city with a wide-eyed idiocy I was entirely sure anyone observing me would notice, or remained at the Palace conversing with Queen of Swords and Runner or reading the surprising number of books, everything from recipes to tales from the World to the hand-bound scribblings of local writers, that filled the house, seeming mostly to have originated from the Magus as well as a few previous occupants.

It was by no means a perfect situation. Cooking anything required either building a fire behind the house and a cauldron I could barely lift or a runic stone that sparked alarmingly and cooked unevenly. The charms for heat that the Magus had placed on the house as a whole worked perhaps half the time and while water was readily available from the taps the lack of heating made washing a daunting prospect on cold spring mornings. (“That’s Soho life. Heat, plumbing, structural integrity, pick two. Or more often one,” Ciara said when I compared it to the Diggers’ similarly unreliable amenities.) I still shared a room with Runner, but our time there rarely coincided except when we slept, and he and most of the rest of the inhabitants of the Palace were uniformly kind in a way that half heartened and half terrified me. Slightly less terrifying was Tál, who seemed pleasant enough but who had hardly spoken two words to me together since my arrival. And then there was Darel.

Darel, whose disapproval at the world around him, particularly at me and my lack of knowledge befitting a denizen of the Realm, seemed etched onto his face. Darel, who insisted on seating everyone by rank on the rare occasions that the household ate together despite Queen of Swords’ assertion that he had no idea what he was talking about. (I pretended an incapacity to speak of my own rank and was rewarded with a harsh glare but the subject was nonetheless dropped.) Darel, who worked hauling heavy and occasionally heavily-ensorcelled cargo at the Riverside Docks, who came home late at night covered in mud and splinters and clearly exhausted but never complained. Darel, whose every glance over his shoulder reminded me of myself. _I know what it is to hide from the past._ _Yet if you seek to hide from your past, why among those who comprise it?_ I thought, thinking of the grim-faced, red-clad Blood brethren I'd been told roamed the streets south of the Palace with poisonous words and the ever-lingering threat of violence for anyone darker or rounder-featured than themselves.

It was perhaps three weeks following my arrival and I had left the Digger House in late-afternoon sunlight, traveling in the direction of the Onion Street Apothecary for the purchase of a new comb and soap when a flash of more green than I fancied I had ever seen along the streets of Soho caught my eye through two neighboring buildings. Moments later the shout “Don’t just stand there! Get a trowel! Or an axe, or something!” drew my attention further and I stepped toward the commotion with a wary eye on my surroundings. The sight was arresting—a collection of humans, Truebloods and all combinations thereof seemed to be doing battle with a wall of green vines which even as I watched seemed to encroach on the surrounding buildings. To my surprise in a city which seemed to house more people than could comfortably fit I recognized a face in the crowd—Evan, the human who had helped me on my first day, standing side-by-side with a bald, dark-skinned halfblood and hacking at a mass of exposed roots with a hoe. “Get those big boles out of the ground! I’m from the South, I know what I’m talking about!” she was shouting.

“Evan!” I called, tripping toward her across a collection of vines near as thick as my wrist. “What is this? What can I do?”

She whipped her head toward me, her hair (now dyed a surprising shade of turquoise) obscuring her eyes. “Kudzu! Someone brought fucking kudzu in here. Grab that shovel and give us a hand,” she said, jerking her chin toward a large spade leaning against a fence nearly completely subsumed by the encroaching vines.

I snatched up the shovel and began uprooting where I was instructed to; producing a number of knotted, fibrous masses which were quickly handed off to the supervisors of a large bonfire someone had created in a metal barrel. The vines crawled everywhere, bursting out shoots topped with clusters of delicate purple flowers that I fancied seemed to be growing faster than we could possibly have fought them back, but after what must have been close to an hour the majority of the plant seemed to lie dead around us. “What started this?” I asked Evan who held one end of a thin, shallowly-placed root, following it along and uprooting as she went.

“ _Someone,_ ” she said with a glare at a short Trueblood woman stoking the fire who made a rude gesture in response, “didn’t check her newest shipment of seeds from the World for anything that didn’t belong and then managed to get this monstrosity right in the middle of a fertility spell she’d been using for her fairy ferns. This is what I've been saying all along about magic between plots colliding," she concluded, more to her companion than to me.

“Some plants of the Realm simply do not grow without particular enchantments at all, and many people need it for their plots. Would you deny fertilizer to humans for its smell or its capacity to sicken if used incorrectly?” the halfblood asked calmly. “In four years a spell has never caused anything to react this badly, even the most potent plants of the Realm or the World.”

“Manure is _not_ the same thing as malfunctioning spells. That kudzu might have taken the whole garden and beyond if we hadn’t been quick about it, and I for one do not want to have been the one to turn Onion Street into fucking Sleeping Beauty's castle,” Evan replied with a careless gesture over her shoulder.

I looked in the direction she had indicated and felt my breath catch in my throat. Beyond the patch of destruction at our feet, surrounded by rundown buildings on all sides, stretched a garden larger than any I had seen since my childhood and beautiful in its sheer chaos. Thick stands of hazel and sweetfire stood in neatly rowed-off plots between tall stalks, clambering vines and even small trees from the World I could not have named, all in the beautiful, tentative first stages of spring blooming. In the wake of the commotion the garden's occupants meandered between plots, variously talking and reapplying themselves to tending the bounty each small bed seemed to house even so early in the year. Evan seemed to notice my staring and turned to me from the apparently concluded argument with a smile. “It’s nice to see you again. Are you still living at that sweet house on Carnival?”

“Yes. Whose garden is this? Do you work here?”

“This is the Little Onion Street Community Garden, for all the horticultural needs of Soho residents without yards,” she replied. “Everyone with a plot works to maintain it, though Oisin here is as in charge as anyone since he was the one who originally reclaimed what used to be a shitty trash-filled alley.” She gestured in the direction of the bald halfblood who nodded in my direction with a wink.

I glanced back at the rows nearest the disturbed earth, the beginnings of potatoes and some sort of mint ripped from the soil along with the clinging vines. “Is there anything further I can do here? I feel as though I owe it to my housemate to document all of this.”

“Sure, start checking those potatoes there to see if any can be replanted,” Evan told me, kneeling into the earth on legs dirty and bared from the knees down to begin doing the same. “Who’s your housemate?”

“He goes by ‘the Magus,’ and he’s a researcher at—“

“The UWF? Oh, I know the Magus! I’m doing a master’s thesis right now on translation of Realm languages and he pointed me to some really awesome phonology comparisons I never would’ve found otherwise. Haven't been around his department much lately, though. Is he still with that Second guy?”

I thought of the sadness on the Magus’s face whenever the name came up in conversation and shook my head. “I don’t believe so. Tell me more about your studies, though.”

The work was slow and somewhat arduous for one who had been raised in a house where servants and practical enchantments performed most tasks (much like the cooking, sweeping and laundering I had only similarly recently begun to learn, I reflected with an internal flush of shame) but the damage was not so great as it looked save for some few smaller plants around which the kudzu had twined itself near-inextricably. Soon the majority of what had been torn from the ground alongside the encroaching root crowns had been returned to the soil with an injunction from Evan for her fellow gardeners to keep an eye on the spot for the next few days. Through it all she kept up a continuous thread of conversation in the odd but engaging human manner that seemed fearful of allowing silence fall to between two proximate people. She was, I learned, a student of ancient human civilizations who had come to Bordertown to study them in relation to parts of the Realm reputed to have had contact with the civilizations in question. She was paid by the University to transcribe Realm script into the most common World alphabet of Bordertown, she gardened, wrote tales, and kept her market stall in Letterville where she sold what she grew in the garden as well as at her home near the Old City wall. Following every fact she returned a similar question to me and I answered her facts with my own as best I could, tripping around the stumbling blocks set by the Gate enchantments and gingerly asking for clarification when the translation magics rang too literal or provided no context.

“Might I come back? I imagine all the plots must be taken and I know nothing about gardening, but if I might help you in any other way…” I asked as the sun dipped toward the canal, the air cooled and I reluctantly remembered the accoutrements I would need to make myself presentable, if not beautiful.

Evan smiled broadly. “Come back tomorrow and I'm sure we can work something out.”

***

I stepped in the door past Tál and Queen of Swords practicing sword forms on the small patch of grass in front of the Palace (Tál seemed to be a swordsmanship enthusiast as well, perhaps the single thing I had learned of him to date) and up the stairs to knock softly at the Magus’s door. He opened it, dressed in a ragged blue dressing gown over his usual World tunic and trousers, an ink stain somehow splashed across one cheek. “Would it be an imposition for me to tell you of something relevant to your studies at this hour?” I asked in response to his politely questioning look.

“Certainly not. Come in?” he offered, moving a pile of books from one of the room’s two shabby chairs to the side of a desk crowded with yet more complex diagrams. The room was surprisingly neat otherwise, overflowing bookcase and rumpled sheets notwithstanding. I sat and began to relay the story of the aggressive vines, responding periodically to his interjections. No, I had not been there when the plant began to sprout. Yes, I believed the original spell had been active for some time, though I was unsure how long. No, no heat lamps or other World apparatuses had been in use throughout the garden that I had seen. A column of notes involving ley lines and possible patterns of magical flux from over the Border flowed from his pen like a tiny stream of dark water. “Would this Oisin mind if Maris or I were to take some less than intrusive measurements of the soil? Perhaps some samples of the vine if any remained unburned?” he asked.

“I was bade return tomorrow so I would be happy to ask for you.”

“Thank you, Goblin.” The feeling of warmth provoked by the affection in his use of the once-despised sobriquet was almost enough to make my following question seem a wise idea. “Who was Second?”

The Magus glances at me sharply and I could not help but recoil at the anger and hurt on his face. “Forgive me—“ I began, but he held up a hand, features softening.

“No, forgive me. You only startled me bringing it up so abruptly. I may as well tell you as long as you've heard some of it.” He stared from the window out over the barren plot behind the house. “Second was a friend of Tál’s who came to live at the Palace some time before you arrived here. He was both my research partner before Maris and my lover, both of us studying similar fields and attempting to tie our results together into a better understanding of Border magic."

He took a deep breath. “Some months into our studies I was detained by the Silver Suits for some days without any word as to why. I was finally informed that Second had been studying the magical disruptions of the Border specifically to augment... well, the explanation is complicated and doesn't especially matter, but for an attempt to use the instability of the Border's presence in the World to disrupt its integrity, all for the feud of some noble family against another exiled here. Exactly the kind of petty squabbling I had come here to avoid, and one that saw Second accused of high treason for an attempt to breach the Realm from this side. An attempt that might well have succeeded had he... had  _we_ had more time."

I swallowed hard. “You came here to avoid such things?"

“I come from a long line of bards and other lore-seekers often employed by the..." A pause of the kind I was quickly becoming familiar with. "...the ruling bodies to gain the upper hand in such disputes. Wishing only the knowledge for its own sake, I left as soon as I was able." His light tone belied his words, eyes behind the spectacles unable to entirely hide their contraction with the pain of speaking the words. "At any rate, Second was taken across the Border to be tried for crimes against the Realm. Once the Dragon’s Tooth Hill magistrates had determined my true lack of knowledge about the plot I was set free, and I've heard nothing of him since."

After a number of attempts at sound from an opening and closing mouth that must have made me resemble a fish, I managed, “Thank you for telling me. I swear I won’t betray this trust.”

The Magus smiled sadly. "It's hardly a secret, only something that I hardly enjoy talking about. I've told Runner since. As for the betrayal of trust—" he said with a canny look which made me wonder how much he truly knew, or had guessed—"if there is one thing that can be guaranteed about a place in which everyone is running from something it is that the secrets of others become that much easier to respect when you have your own."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oisin is pronounced "Osheen," or "oʊˈʃiːn" if you're an IPA person. The Silver Suits are the police force of Bordertown who rarely show up in Soho for anything sort of, well, high treason, making it the wretched hive of gangs and majority rule it tends to be. Tags have been updated for hopefully the last time in a while.


	7. Chapter 7

“I should never have come here.”

I hazarded a glance across the stacks of dirtied breakfast plates toward the speaker, a human hardly out of childhood judging by his stature and voice. “Sometimes I’ve felt the same way,” I replied when he said nothing more.

“It’s just same shit, different day. At least at home I knew how to deal. Where everything was, who to avoid, all that. Here it’s just a whole new set of bullshit to learn. Some of it’s good, but the gangs, the elf-human stuff, how no one except you guys gives a damn about anyone but themselves… it’s the same stupid cliques and ideas, just dressed up weirder.” I said nothing, allowing his words to spill into the silence between us. “I still wouldn’t go back home for anything, but… is it the same on the other side of the Border?”

“I was raised in such isolation that you would be better off asking someone else,” I replied, picking my words so as to avoid tripping myself on the barrier of silence. “I only wish I had not been so that I might have some kind of wisdom for you.”

“Not like that’s your fault.” He sighed and dipped a plate into the cooling tub of soapy water before him. “No one’s got any other wisdom either, so it’s not like it matters. I mean, I know everyone thought it would be different before they came here, everyone says so. I just thought it’d be _something_ besides doing dishes and getting shot down all the time.”

I blinked at “shot down,” assuming it wasn’t as serious as the translation made it sound. “I only wish I had some way to put this place into perspective for you. However, it is my duty and… and privilege to make sure that your immediate needs are met so you might find the perspective I can’t give. Is there anything you want for?”

The youth shrugged. “I guess not. I mean, there’s food and a place to sleep, that’s more than a lot of people I’ve seen have. I just don’t know what I’m going to do when the stay’s up. All the okay squats and stuff are full and I know I’d never make rent with the kind of stuff I can do. No one wants to pay a noob to play guitar just okay.”

“Do you know where the job resource board is?” He shook his head, and I tried to remember the words I had heard Ciara speak to other similarly unsure residents in the past months. “It’s in the hall by the front desk, along with directions to the more complete listings at the Poop, that place by Cafe Cubana. The work advertised is hardly glamorous but most of it’s no worse than this—“ I gestured to the stack of porridge-crusted plates before him— “and it’s a fair place to start, at least while you work on your guitar playing. It… it was lovely this morning, when you were playing for those girls.”

“Thanks.” He ducked his head low and fell so silent I feared I had offended him. Wary of asking and only offending him in truth I bit my lip and reapplied myself to drying the dishes.

“You’re right,” I heard the same boy observe to a friend as I passed by their spot on the common room couch that evening. “That grey dude's a really good listener.”

***

The plot I had been gifted at the Little Onion Street Garden, though pronounced small and shady by most residents, was flourishing as I had hardly dared to hope when I stepped through the small gate following an afternoon of transcribing donations. When the prior week the strawberry seeds I had planted had begun to send up tentative shoots I had caught my breath with such delight that Evan had heard and laughed, though not unkindly. I had been gifted the spare seeds by the rest of the garden, as well as potato eyes and a whole head of a sunflower from a crop its original owner said had bloomed in every color but yellow the previous year. Even with the help I had received from those with actual knowledge and their own tools I could hardly help but feel a surge of pride every time I looked on the work I had done with my own hands over the past month. This warm afternoon, free of work and with none to look forward to the next day, was no different as I knelt in the dirt to carefully remove a few days’ worth of dandelions between my two chatting rowmates, who greeted me warmly. I watered, weeded and tended as around me the city on the Border carried on. Two stray cats howled at each other from opposite sides of a fence. Brightly-painted chimes hung from the eaves of the clothing store that bordered the garden to the west, pealing softly in the afternoon breeze. Competing vendors, one peddling nuts roasted in honey and the other boiled dough in a thin wrapper made of maize leaves, argued genially over whose wares were more savory. Eventually some plot owner's lover, a handsome Trueblood called Nervous because he seemed to be anything but, appeared to draw a large crowd of us (including Evan, who caught my arm before I could excuse myself gracefully) toward the nearest drinking establishment. It was slightly after dusk when I finally made my way home, music and laughter ringing in my head and with a pot of tomato cuttings from a generous fellow gardener clutched in one hand.

Queen of Swords met me at the door dressed to go out, holding it open for me with a small, meditative smile. “You’re like some human from a tale who joins a Trueblood revel and dances himself to death. Do you ever sleep?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Only that when you arrived here you hardly seemed to have any interests or pastimes beyond fretting about those less fortunate than you. Now we hardly ever see you nights, between your work and your friends and that garden, when you're not up in your room reading every book in the house. You’ve… bloomed, as surely as that plant,” she said with a gesture at my tomato shoots.

“I… suppose I hadn’t thought of it that way. Thank you,” I replied with a lopsided smile.

“Runner’s leaving tomorrow morning, by the by, so you’ll have your room to yourself again,” I heard her call as I ascended the stairs.

“What?” I near-yelped, turning quickly around, then back toward the door of our—my—room at the sound of the front door’s slam and no answer. True to the Queen’s words, I opened the door to find Runner kneeling on the threadbare carpet near the window organizing a file full of letters into what looked to be alphabetical order. He reached up to relight the guttering candle on the windowsill with a touch of one elegant finger only to catch sight of me with a smile. “Goblin! You only need share this place with me one more night,” he told me.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“Perfectly. Someone’s just paid me twice my usual rate to carry some correspondence to her father on the western reaches. Near where we met, actually,” he said with a circumspect glance at me through the pearl-hued strands of his hair.

“I’m glad. Though I am surprised a royal messenger would not have been called back sooner,” I said, attempting to ignore the dull mass of disappointment that had lodged itself in my chest. _Dost thou not_ want _the privacy and space these folk have gone out of their way to give thee, thou petulant child?_ my mind patronized.

Runner shook his head, laughing. “Just because it's the royal seal I bear for this job doesn’t mean I work immediately for any ruler. If I did, half the sort of thing you had to harbor me for carrying would have been discovered long ago and I would be imprisoned, or worse.” He glanced at me, not without a hint of mischief around his eyes. “There’s only one connected to any ruler who I've served directly and I’m about to leave him to the mercies of the Border once again.”

“Please, don’t say such things,” I begged with a glance toward the door.

“I’m sorry. Forgive me.” He fixed his gaze on his pack, shadows from the candlelight and the spellfire out the window playing over his face. “I’m sure you’ll continue to prosper as you have so far. Only by Mab and all her attendant spirits, don’t be afraid to decorate this room. I would hardly have minded, and with any luck I won’t be staying here when I return.”

“I will, I swear.” I cast a rueful glance toward the carefully wrapped packages scattered around the floor, unwilling to bid him goodbye so soon. “If you’ll be up much later I could make some tea.”

“That sounds delightful. Here, use this,” he said, hanging me two paper sachets labelled ‘Garden of the Gods’ and, after a moment’s consideration, a small flask from a side pocket of the pack.

***

I awoke to early afternoon sunlight, dry-mouthed and panicking that I was late only to remember the freedom the day promised. Memories of the previous night followed: laughter, quiet talk, more laughter, the tales Runner seemed to have one of for every occasion. His attempts to find a strange World device used to play games which had led him beyond the forest outside the city, a contest with human dowsing rod Orient to find so many objects in an hour with his own less-specialized magic, a few narrow brushes with the law on either side of the Border over contraband or simply in aid of one of the Soho residents who so respected him, each had left me breathlessly awaiting the next and wishing my own past had left me capable of reciprocating such amusements. I remembered lying atop my sheets, gaze fixed on his lovely, animated face through a haze of sleep and slight intoxication, melancholy nearly obscured by the happiness his presence inspired and slowly drifting to sleep to the sound of the soft Realm accents of his voice. And now he was gone, leaving me with a lonely hollowness in my chest each time I glanced at his reclining chair but also with some time to consider what I might say when I next saw him. What I would inevitably have to confess, that I had only realized short hours ago, were I to avoid living out every further moment in his presence as a pining, ineffectual fool.

_If he returns,_ the voice of my contrary mind hissed, and I threw off the covers in exasperation.

I ventured downstairs to find Maris sitting at the kitchen table across from the Magus, both of them eating large, slightly burnt bannocks of some sort. “Goblin!” Maris greeted me, sliding a third mismatched chair out from the table. She had taken off her mask to eat, something the Magus had told me she only did in company she trusted. Past the swollen pustules that bubbled over her skin I could finally see how the strong, sharp lines of her cheekbones and the unshadowed spark of her brown eyes formed a truly pleasant whole. “I haven’t seen you in a while. What’s new?”

Heart still fluttering with the thought of my renewed purpose, I sat, accepting a bannock from the Magus. “Well, I’ve taken up gardening. And apparently the Digger House residents have decided that I’m a good listener.”

Maris laughed. "Goblin, anyone sitting at this table could have told you that."


	8. Chapter 8

In Runner’s absence I continued to dream of him—none of the dreams I might have cared to have, but muddled, unpleasant sensations of following him back across the Border with a dire warning or simply my long-delayed confession of desire but being unable to catch him for either. I had never been so uncouth as to mention the dreams to him while we had shared a room but I wondered if he knew in any case. I had talked in my sleep all my life, as I had been informed with various degrees of impatience by my cousin, my mother and the occasional concerned servant. If I had spoken, he surely would have heard, I reasoned, pushing any fear of what he might have gleaned to the back of my mind along with my other fears involving him, to be buried under a steady stream of work and the diversions of the Border.

At the Digger House it seemed I spent more time laundering donated clothing and speaking to the residents than I did transcribing the stacks of ledgers in the back office, the dwindled numbers of which I looked on with apprehension for the time when there would be no more work for me. The more immediate work was rewarding, but it seemed that for everyone we took in, fed, sheltered, clothed and then released to a better place there were five who I reluctantly turned away over the sounds of their pleas for just one night, directing them to the Free Clinic or to a list of squats far more crowded and less welcoming than the one I had been guided to. The amount of folk who approached me with their problems at first alarmed me and even once I had become accustomed to it I could not help but feel that whatever counsel I gave caused as much harm as it eased. Particularly with human affairs of the heart.

“So he resents us for being together even though she barely even dated him in the first place,” the girl—Katherine, I remembered—was saying as we laid out cups and plates in the main hall, every other word punctuated with a sigh. I maintained an irritated silence at the story which had been minutes in its recounting so far and seemed unlikely to end soon. “I mean, it’s not like we even had anywhere else to go! She was hurting and needed some comfort…” She glanced at me for validation before faltering at something she saw in my face. “I… I just gave it to her because she needed it and I was there. He’s just being a possessive asshole over someone he never even had to begin with but now she’s trying to make it up to _him_ like he didn’t scream at her in front of the entire house. It just makes me feel like—“

“Must you humans always unburden yourself of these _feelings_ to those around you who care the least?” I snapped. Even as they left my mouth the words sounded in my ears with a a cold, impatient edge that struck me with a sickening familiarity. It was the voice I had heard used near every time I had dared to open my mouth, every time I had expressed any sort of opinion, interest or simple observation—the voice of my cousin. Katherine, meanwhile, retreated to the other side of the room looking as though she were about to burst into tears.

“Goblin.” With heart and ears alike sinking, I turned to see Ciara standing in the doorway. Lips set in a thin line, I turned and followed her into the cot-equipped room closer to a closet than an office that served as the clinic for all three Digger Houses. “If you feel like you’re not able to handle a resident's concerns then you should direct them to someone better-equipped to do so. Especially as far as culture clashes like that go,” she told me after briskly closing the door, face set in a way that brought me more shame than any number of stronger reprimands possibly could have. “I know it can be disturbing to have humans tell you their exact feelings about things so frankly with the hope that you’ll solve them, but I also know that Alejandro went over this with you during orientation.”

“I apologize. I won’t allow such a thing to happen again,” I muttered, earnestly avoiding her eyes to the point that I jumped at the light touch of her two fingers on the back of my hand. I had occasionally seen her casually touch others, but only humans or those who had been in Bordertown long enough for such things to not seem outlandish.

“Goblin,” she began, “you know that as a force we’re here for our own as well as others. If there’s anything bothering you you’re welcome to talk to one of us about it.”

“Bothering me?” I repeated stupidly. “No. It was a moment’s lapse, I swear. I should probably find her and apologize, in any case.”

“It’s two minutes till the end of your shift,” Ciara said with a glance toward the door as somewhere in the distance another door slammed. “You can apologize if you can find her, otherwise wait until tomorrow. I'll take care of things in the meantime.”

“I will. Forgive me.”

***

Following my failure to find Katherine in the mass of residents congregated for dinner, I left the Digger House to make my way home. Heart heavy in my chest, I followed my usual ways, only fetching up once in a blind alley tagged with fairy dust that I might have sworn the previous week had led through to Ho Street. As I approached the house I saw Darel lugging a cart’s worth of large shipping crates from the docks, obviously splintered beyond repair, that the Palace occasionally used for cooking fires into the space behind the house. He acknowledged my presence with a slight bow rather than a haughty glare and in a moment I was dragging crates next to him, wincing with pain at the occasional splinter and hoping that the labor would distract me from the shame that still lay on me like a heavy cloak. “Thank you for bringing these,” I said after a few minutes’ work.

He frowned. “The broken ones are always spare at the docks. It would hardly be proper to haul them to some scrapyard in Tintown when we might use them here.”

“With all your concern for propriety I sometimes wonder how you can stand to live anywhere as disreputable as this.” I meant it lightly, but the hostility in his eyes at the words made me wonder exactly how it had sounded to him. _Canst thou say_ nothing _right this day? Or any other day?_

“Regardless of how I _can,_ I do, and one so new to this town as you are would do well not to make assumptions on the propriety of those around them.” Dumbstruck, I tried to formulate an apology, but before I could he burst out, “You come here in clothing no lowborn would ever wear, you speak like one raised by the Crown itself for all your ignorance of basic decorum, and yet you’ve forsaken that. What was _your_ reasoning?” he demanded, clearly not expecting an answer.

Face burning, ears flat to my head, I turned to face him with a cold, calculating fury I knew I would later regret. “Yes. I am a—one cast off by the Crown. For my first years I lived in exile with my goblin-blooded mother before she died, half of simple illness and half of a grief her love for me could not ease. I was then sent to live with a disgraced relative who detested me and who lived in an isolated mire where I saw nothing of the court—any court. I saw little enough of anything at all until I met Runner in his flight from some who sought him from the usual illicit things he carries across the Border. Having heard of this place as somewhere one might escape to I prevailed upon him to guide me here, and he did. And now I’ve answered your question.”

The shock on Darel’s face sent another painful stab of triumph through my heart and I knew there was no way that one so tediously correct as he would not repay my forthrightness. “For the crimes I’ve committed in the name of the Blood, the violence and the savagery no Realm-born Trueblood would condone against their worst human enemy, I deserve nothing better than Soho can offer,” he told me, biting off every word as if it pained him to speak them. “You spoke of your mother’s exile—this is my exile. I work for humans, I make amends where I might, and I live among those with no other recourse because in my shame I have none either.”

It was my turn to gape. “That can’t be true.”

“You don’t know what you speak of.” He hurled a crate onto the growing pile with a crash, ignoring the fact that I’d stopped working altogether. “I’ve beaten humans hardly out of childhood for the crime of a few strong words against the Realm. I’ve chased newcomers for blocks and into worse than Blood grounds for happening to walk too close to Ginger Street and possessing round ears. I’ve held the True and Only Realm higher than anyone, and when its folk showed me what I had become in its name—when Runner, and Queen of Swords, and diverse others showed me—I knew I had been wrong, horribly wrong, to do so. And so I live here to remind myself what I was, and still am.”

“Every punishment has an end,” I managed after several long moments of silence.

“Then mine has not ended yet.” He unloaded the final crate and lifted up the handles of the cart, presumably to wheel it back whence it had come, with the most cursory of nods in my direction. I stood for some time in the gathering dark, saying nothing and feeling less in his absence. Eventually I stepped inside to pick at a late supper and then retire to bed, tossing and turning in my own uselessness and in the absence of soft, measured breathing from the armchair.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Contains songfic.

I made my apologies to Katherine the next day. In the odd human fashion that seemed particularly prevalent among women she apologized in return for “dumping all her baggage” on me, even after my repeated assurances that it was the task of the Diggers to listen to such things. Frustrated, I returned to my work with a frown that Ciara almost immediately noticed. “Goblin. Really. What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I suppose I had ultimately hoped,” I said, avoiding meeting her eyes by scanning a sheet scrawled with what looked like the names of fish transcribed phonetically into runes, “that I would prove useful enough to be kept on when my clerical work was finished. But it's no use. I hardly know how to connect with Truebloods enough to help a house half full of them at any given time, let alone humans.”

“The vast majority of the people you’ve worked with, human or Trueblood, have had nothing but good to say about you,” Ciara said. “Ordinarily you know how to listen to people's complaints and constructively direct their concerns, which is what made that outburst yesterday so surprising. You know we’re all about the second chances around here—I trust that you’ve learned from your mistake and you’re willing to move on.”

“I have. But as you say, moving on is integral to the workings of this house and I took up this task knowing that I was no different. You can hardly afford to pay me as it is, let alone when I’ve moved on to more quotidian work alone.”

“Look. I can’t promise you one hundred per cent there will be more paid work for you when you’re finished with the bookkeeping, but if we do have to let you go it won’t be for complaints from the residents, or the lack of enthusiasm or a work ethic.” She smiled at me far too kindly. “You're welcome to use our employment services in that event, as I've mentioned before. And I can promise that any recommendations you might need for a subsequent job will be glowing.”

Somewhat heartened, I thanked her and finished the list of fish which resolved itself by the end into an inventory of trinkets mainly donated from the merchants of Trader’s Heaven. Following this I retreated to the sweltering kitchen to prepare a large cauldron of soup before eating, delegating the dishwashing and then making my way home under the bright summer sky, heart perhaps half as heavy as it had been the previous day. As I approached the Palace I noticed a battered but sturdy-looking World motorcycle positioned on the street outside. Drawing closer I noticed the sigil painted on the side, remembered the card where I had last seen it, and broke into a run up the front steps.

Runner, seated on the sofa next to Tál and Queen of Swords (the former aiding the latter in braiding her hair into countless small plaits) started up at my approach and I almost rushed to embrace him in the human manner before remembering myself and bowing courteously instead. “Welcome home,” I told him.

“Thank you, though I’ve arranged to stay at one of the hostels on Stone Street for the duration this time.” He stepped forward to grasp my arms affectionately, a gesture I returned after a moment of floundering.

“Is that… vehicle outside yours?” I asked in a sudden absence of anything more intelligent to say.

Runner grinned broadly. “It cost me the best part of my life savings, six hours of work on the warding sigil and the last of my favors with anyone in Trader’s Heaven but my feet and back have begun to thank me already. And fortunately I’m not quite so beggared that I can’t come celebrate Midsummer this evening.”

I blinked. “Midsummer. I’d completely forgotten that was today.” The roasting heat of the Digger House kitchen, the few mentions of revels I’d heard the residents speaking of, everything finally permeated the self-absorbed fog that had clouded my mind of late. “I can hardly believe it’s been so many months since I arrived here. What sort of celebration are you attending?”

“We usually go to the bonfire at Fare-you-Well Park,” Queen of Swords said, smiling in her usual way—amused, but kindly so—at my realization. “There’s food and music and dancing and rarely any gang or class strife. We’re only waiting for the Magus and Darel. Would you like me to braid _your_ hair in the meanwhile?”

By the time Darel and the Magus returned from their respective places of employment I had washed, dressed myself in what might pass for festive clothing (light, comfortable green trousers and a slightly worn but richly embroidered shirt of creamy Realm linen that a Digger House resident had gifted me for arranging a more permanent residence for her) and had my hair braided by the Queen’s firm but surpassingly gentle fingers. To avoid meeting Darel’s gaze I devoted my attention to the story Runner was telling about a Black Shuck the Border guard kept to sniff out illegal materials and how he had once bribed it—not that placing my full attention on him was a trial by any means. _I’ll say something later, when we’re not surrounded by the entire household,_ I thought, feeling the familiar jump of my heart at the prospect intensified tenfold by his actual presence in the room. Once the latter two had made themselves presentable we stepped out the door as a group toward the park.

The clamor of voices; the smells of roasting meat and frying dough; the contentious sound of electrically loudened guitars surrounded us long before we had reached the park proper. Vendors of food and other wares had set up booths and tents along the concrete walkways, winding a trail through crowds of dancing, eating, arguing, celebrating folk—a more diverse collection of humans, Truebloods and everything in between than I had seen side-by-side in harmony anywhere outside the necessity-born tolerance of the Carmine Street Digger House. At the center of the park a rough stage had been erected where as we approached a dark-skinned, dark-eyed human with roses braided through her Trueblood-pale hair was half-singing, half-chanting a ballad which I belatedly identified as the tale of Janet and Tamlane. It was couched in human terms somewhat confused by the spell of translation, but the beat and passion of the cadence captured my attention like no other telling that I could remember.

Runner nudged me. “Do you want anything to drink? I’m paying.”

Jolted from my musical reverie I scanned the rows of stalls boasting food of all sorts, as well as mead, ale, wine, water, even the strange, effervescent World beverages humans so enjoyed despite their cloying sweetness. “Yes. Er. Whatever you know is good I’ll gladly have. Thank you.”

As the Magus moved to inspect a table of beautiful woodcarvings from the Realm and Darel and Tál were drawn into conversation with some few people they knew from their work at the docks I followed Runner and Queen of Swords into a queue behind two young women, a human and a halfblood, animatedly discussing whether someone named Wolfboy were an asshole and how long such had been the case. “Believe me when I say that I hardly would have minded sharing my room at the Palace again,” I said quietly as soon as Queen of Swords’s attention was drawn by a group of her Dragontown friends demonstrating the unarmed fighting style a number of them practiced some distance along the green.

“Well, the last thing I wanted to do was trespass on the space I helped settle you into in the first place without your express leave. Have you made it a bit more your own yet?” he asked me with a smile.

I nodded, my next words drowned out by the delighted exclamation of one of the two in front of us. “Runner! You were right, the spellfire charm’s working like… well, a charm,” the halfblood exclaimed with the usual warm smile Runner tended to inspire flashing across her face. “The lighting’s never looked better. Hector’s ready to pay you double for another one if you can get it in time for the next production.”

Runner turned eagerly toward her and began to discuss the possibilities of an ongoing trade arrangement, briefly introducing the two as “Cam, the technical director for Changeling Theater, and her girlfriend, Seal.” I bit my lip, resolving to arrange a meeting with him at a later date for purposes of any privacy whatsoever. Their conversation carried us through the queue, at the termination of which Runner purchased us a a basket of oatcakes variously filled with fruit preserves and roasted nuts as well as several cups of a light, crisp-smelling cider. These we distributed among the others save for Darel who (I privately thanked any kindly spirits in the vicinity) had disappeared with his friends. Queen of Swords shrugged and threw back his share herself as we ate. Atop the stage the chanting woman had been replaced some minutes prior by three Truebloods with a bodhran, a guitar and some sort of horn who were playing loud, energetic variations on songs I knew from my childhood. “Goblin!” Queen of Swords called to me. “Come, dance with us!”

“I… I never learned how to dance!” I protested.

“It’s not so hard as that, you goose! Just follow me and step where I’m not stepping.” Over my sputtering she took my hand, drawing me into the crowd surrounding the stage proper where a wide variety of other revelers were swaying to the beat as well. There seemed to be little true direction—for every person stepping in a graceful, set pattern similar to the one Queen of Swords had pulled me into there were three others leaping to and fro in ways that seemed guaranteed to collide with others, or swinging each other wildly about, or simply swaying in place alone. Even after kicking my newfound dancing mistress in the shins and stepping on her feet numerous times she persevered, teaching me a few simple steps that carried us into the next song, then the next until I stopped to lean against a tree, laughing and gasping for breath. At my elbow Tál held out a cup of a fresh, grassy-smelling mead and I drank the health of those who remained around me—at this point everyone but the Magus who was dancing with a human perhaps half his height in a manner that looked so like the ungainly mating dance of a heron I had seen once in the swamps that I could not help but laugh again.

Through the crowd I thought I saw Evan surrounded by a group of other humans sporting improbable hair colors but before I could follow up the thought and call to her my attention was claimed by the newest occupant of the stage—a dark, severe human with an odd trapezoidal instrument balanced on her knees. Under her fingers the sides of the instrument glowed with runes in vibrant colors, each distorting the tone and pitch of each notes into something strange and electric-sounding, but not at all unpleasing to hear, as she launched into her song:

_Over the mountains and over the waves_

_Under the fountains and under the graves_

_Under floods that are deepest, which Neptune obey_

_Over rocks that are steepest, Love will find out the way._

Another pale hand found mine and, turning, I found myself face-to-face not with Queen of Swords but with Runner. He returned my smile and pulled me into the the whirl of the crowd once again, directing my steps gracefully with his until the two of us moved together as naturally as most around us.

_You may esteem him a child for his might_

_Or you may deem him a coward for his flight._

Unsure of where to look—over his shoulder to where the two girls from the queue twirled laughingly around each other, past the crowd to where the skeleton of the bonfire Queen of Swords had mentioned was being erected, up to the trees where someone had strung a handful of rag-paper lanterns—I allowed myself to truly enter the moment and damn my own self-consciousness and doubt. More intoxicated by the revel itself than by the drinks I had been plied with, I stepped more boldly with Runner, ceasing to wince every time I missed a step and simply letting our movement carry us where it would.

_Where there’s no place for the glow worm to lie_

_Where there’s no space for receipt of a fly_

_Where the midge dares not venture, lest herself fast she lay_

_If Love come, he will enter, and will find out the way._

So close to the one whose presence I had so longed for I admired the delicate sheen of sweat over his forehead in the slowly waning evening heat, the sway of his long, unbound hair. The crowd ebbed and flowed chaotically around us, forcing us nearer and nearer to each other. My heart pounded in my ears, not from simple exertion, only to seize in my chest for what felt like a span of ten beats as I saw him close his eyes, fingers reaching up to softly tangle in the hair at the base of my neck.

_You may esteem him a child for his might_

_Or you may deem him a coward for his flight._

His lips were soft as if he had passed his tongue over them moments before. My breath seemed stolen from my lungs by the simple touch of them upon my own, the press of his arms around me. All my planning, all the agonizing over my choice of words and what manner to pursue him in had come to naught and yet I could not, somehow, find it in myself to be disappointed. As if from a great distance, under the sea or above the clouds, I hearkened to the singer’s words as their meaning echoed through the spell:

_But if she who Love doth honor be concealed from the day_

_Set a thousand guards upon her; Love will find out the way!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cam and Seal feature in Elizabeth Kushner's story "Changeling" from _The Essential Bordertown_ as well as the lovely Yuletide 2010 fic [ Two Girls on a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Band)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/142859). (As long as I'm trying to make Bordertown happen I might as well shill the work of those who have come before me on Ao3, right?) The initial song is Jane Yolen's "Soulja Grrrl: A Long-Line Rap," her take on the ballad of Tam Lin as printed in _Welcome to Bordertown._ The specifically quoted one is [Qntal's _Tenacious Love_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGL79l51gDs), a musical rendition of an anonymous seventeenth-century poem. That song in specific as well as Qntal in general (in addition the music video, the aesthetic of which is Bordertown AF) has informed a great deal of the soundtrack for this writing process to date, along with copious amounts of Loreena McKennitt, Dire Straits and Steeleye Span.


	10. Chapter 10

“I suppose I’ll tell the hostel I won’t be needing their services tomorrow morning.”

“A good plan, I think.”

“…What is it?”

“The light from the window… you’re like a prism, bending it into different colors.”

“Well, all light needs darkness to shine in.”

“Are you this good at _everything_ that you put your mouth to?”

“I’ve never been able to whistle particularly well.”

“Ha! Fair enough.”

“Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

“I had feared as much. What have you heard me say?”

“Nothing incriminating, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Half the time it’s just nonsense and the other half it’s you... berating yourself for things. Thee-ing and thou-ing yourself like a child.”

“My guardian used to speak so to me, even past my childhood. Sometimes I fancy a part of him still lives on in my mind, judging whatever I do.”

“Of everyone I’ve ever helped find this place I feel as though you’ve been the one who’s needed it the most.”

“I very much doubt that.”

“Goblin, being an heir of the Realm doesn’t negate the fact that you were raised somewhere the lowest half-human drudge would have been spared, and by a man who detested you. Whoever it is you’re descended from didn’t deserve you.”

“Hence why no one’s come looking for me since my arrival.”

“It’s the Crown’s loss if they choose to search for the acknowledged Heir instead of you.”

“How can you speak so freely of these things? The moment I try to mention… any of the rulers, even my presumable sire, it’s like a stone holding my tongue in place.”

“Coming and going so often as I do you find ways. Often it’s a matter of learning how to phrase things, and it’s much easier to speak so to those who know the Realm than to anyone from this side of the border, whatever their blood.”

“I stand by my statement that your mouth is surpassingly talented.”

“Flatterer.”

***

For two weeks we shared a room and a bed. Each morning we ate together, kissed, and parted ways until he came to find me at either the Digger House or my garden plot following a day of business dealings. I would mount the vehicle behind him, head crowned with the twin to his bulky helmet which he insisted I wear to augment the ward’s protection should an accident befall us. Together (at my own insistence) we would deliver the smaller messages and goods he made a living running between larger commissions, taking clients from Dragon’s Tooth Hill office buildings dated to before the Return to the cramped, smoky kitchens of Soho restaurants and everywhere in between. A handful of excursions took us to the Nevernever where wild-eyed, ragged-clothed Truebloods met us at the edge of the forest to exchange Bordertown-made food or clothing for herbs and fruits I could not name before vanishing into the undergrowth before my unblinking eyes. Following his usual few remaining errands we would either return home to an early night in each other’s company or take to the streets of Soho. To me it seemed Runner knew everything and everyone – the glamorous, pitiless musicians who eked out a better living than most by virtue of skill or enchantment, the young hopefuls from either side of the Border seeking to make a name for themselves, the Dustheads crouched in squalid alleys who could be plied with cheap street food for information on the Soho underworld and then persuaded to repair to a nearby squat for the night, all seemed to have a greeting and a kind word for my lover.

 _I have a lover._ The thought seemed stranger every time it passed through my mind. Lovers were what the heroes of tales had—handsome, learned, charismatic folk who succeeded in the face of adversity. Certainly not goblin-blooded bastard sons spurned by royal fathers who lived in stiflingly hot single rooms on the border of the World and spent all their time finding solutions to entirely mundane problems. _How many tales begin so ignobly, though?_ an unfamiliar voice questioned, and I pushed the thought firmly out of mind.

On the fourteenth day, as we stood watching a group of Truebloods perform scenes from a World play on the edge of Fare-you-Well Park, he told me of his newest commission, one that would take him back across the Border for a period of time he gave as “two weeks, perhaps, hopefully no more.”

“I swear to yearn for you no more and no less than I ought,” I parroted from the players, and he laughed, kissing my brow in the burgeoning dark.

“Take care of my other love,” he replied, with a gesture to the motorcycle he had stood near the edge of the grassy knoll we stood on. “I’ll be back for her—and you—ere you know it.”

That night, and the fifteenth day following it, were almost unbearable in the bittersweetness of his presence as we packed his things together, bid the rest of the Palace farewell, and then journeyed together to the Elfhame Gate where, after a lingering kiss, we parted once more. The morning of the sixteenth day dawned with me sleepless in my hot room, wishing for added heat and the wiry muscle and hair like spun cobweb that had occupied a place next to me for so regrettably little time.

The hollowness inside my chest was filled quickly enough with my still steadily dwindling stack of Digger House ledgers, or the garden where my strawberries had retreated into ruin in the shadow of bright blue sunflowers that towered over my head. In the solitude I more commonly craved, however, it crept once more past happiness and sorrow alike into a pain sharpened by the joy that had preceded it. “It’s going to hurt no matter how casual you’re keeping it,” Evan told me well into the second week of his absence as we weeded peas side-by-side in her own plot.

“That we haven’t sworn our troth immediately as a human pair might doesn’t mean we’ve entered into anything casually,” I replied, more sharply than I had intended, then winced. “Forgive me. That was unfair.”

“No, you’re right. Trueblood romance can be hard for us humans to wrap our heads around. I shouldn’t have assumed,” she agreed, tossing a strand of bindweed that had flowered the same delicate pink as her hair that week onto the growing pile. “I know navigating the Border can be tricky, but he’s survived this long, right? Short of another big leap forward I’m sure he’ll be back before you know it.”

 _Platitudes,_ the voice I’d begin to think of as my cousin’s contribution sneered. I ignored it, thanked her, and continued to uproot the unwanted plants for another hour before I excused myself to make my way home. As I approached the front steps of the Palace in the shadow of looming rainclouds I saw Tál perched on the topmost, sparring blade balanced across his knees in the presumable aftermath of one of his matches with Queen of Swords. “Good evening,” he said, proffering a glass of water poured from an ice-filled carafe next to him which I gratefully took.

“Will you be trouncing the Queen soon?” I asked with a smile, and he ruefully shook his head.

“Even were she not quicker and stronger than I might ever hope to be, half a year of practice by a lowborn fool who works as a laborer would hardly compare to a trained duelist,” he said with no rancor, only a slight wistfulness.

“I had fancied you were noble. You’re better versed in such ways than I might ever hope to be,” I replied.

“I grew up in a poor brugh in a marsh near the western reaches that was hardly grander than a fox’s den. Runner’s talent for diplomatic flattery seems to be rubbing off on you,” he said with a wry smile.

I could not keep the twitch from my ears at the statement. “Near a delta of two rivers? I come from near there as well.” I braced myself for laughter or a knowing smirk but Tál only glanced at me with interest. “Did anything in specific draw you here?” I continued.

“Only the promise and freedom spoken of by all the tales. Somewhere to be someone entirely different than you were—to be yourself and escape from yourself in equal measure.”

The conversation trailed into silence before I decided to push my luck further. “You work with Darel; you must know him better than most. Does he hate me for my mixed blood?” I asked in a rush.

For a moment Tál looked too bemused to speak. Slowly, carefully, he answered, “When I first knew him I would have said that he treats everyone with the same degree of… scrutiny, let us say. Following that I would have had little doubt that your not being fully of the Blood played a part.” He stared into his glass silently. “Some of the things he used to say… Isaol, who lived here before you arrived, had a human lover and I wouldn’t swear that Darel’s hostility to him wasn’t what caused her to seek lodging elsewhere. But in our time working at the docks where the workers are human, Trueblood and every degree in between and cooperation is essential to the completion of any work at all, let alone his time around Runner whose talent for bringing folk together is so legendary…” A shrug. “Has he said anything to you to make you feel so?”

“No.” I stared at the brick wall across the way from the Palace with its dusting of sparkling glyphs and patterns rendered in faery dust. “I wrote off what he once was quickly enough when Runner told me initially, but hearing it from Darel’s own lips…” I briefly outlined our encounter of the previous weeks, unable to avoid expounding on my own guilt in drawing the confession from him, and finally elaborating the discomfort I had felt in his presence ever since. “He seemed defensive and penitent at once and I hardly know whether my absolution or disapprobation would make things better between us,” I finished.

“And this is why any of us in this house would take a blade or a bullet for you. Even him.” The words in the gathering dark were mild but drew my attention like a scream. “It’s as the Queen has told me. You care about those all others have written off as lost causes—even where that care is tinged with anger or resentment or helplessness you always want to know how you can make things better for them. So many come here entirely focused on themselves and their own goals and never stray from that path until they find their success or Bordertown chews them up and spits them out, but your arrival here… you seemed to have no goal but the betterment of others’ situations, and that’s seen you through your time so far better than most I’ve ever known.”

These were the most words I had ever heard Tál speak at a single time and it was all I could do not to gape at him like the fool I felt. “I… I came here without _any_ goal save escape to a place I had heard many found an escape to. For the aid I gave him Runner offered to let me flee with him from the same accursed place you left yourself, and I took the offer. My intentions have never been as noble as you paint them.”

“Yet you’re as noble as any noble I’ve ever met, and far more than most. Unlike Darel at any given meal I don’t know your standing and I don’t care to but you’re all the proof I need that deeds will tell over blood.” He stood, gathering up the pitcher and glasses. “Would you care for a game of cards with the Magus and me?”

“No. Thank you. I’m… meeting some friends elsewhere,” I replied, turning hastily away still clad in my human rags with caked dirt at the knees. Such clothing would hardly have turned a single head in any Soho club or bar but I still would have felt bad inflicting myself upon anyone in such a state had I truly been meeting anyone. Instead I made my way down Soho, past the angled street that led to Rune Lord turf, past early-evening clubgoers lined up outside buildings where the music pounding inside shook the outside walkways, past streetlamps that flickered in arcane patterns I fancied could reveal unseen things if I stood in their light long enough, mind buzzing with the words I had just been gifted.

 _Deeds will tell over blood._ If my blood flowed in the veins of Oberon and Titania, what did that mean? Was the success Tál seemed so eager to ascribe to me myself because of that blood, or in spite of it? Could I truly attribute any good I might have accomplished to my own initiative if it was simply fate that I be as noble as any noble of the True Blood would be in my place? The thought unnerved me more than the thought that my steady housing, the friends I had made, the lover I had somehow acquired, were products of blind luck.  But then, what of the royalty who had cast me off, of those nobles I had heard of on this side of the Wall who treated humans with barely less contempt than the Pack and sought only their own betterment? Of Aldon House on Dragon's Tooth Hill, which I knew little of save their quietly sanctioned trade in human souls? Of the lowborn and halfbloods like Ciara and Berlin who made such differences to the wretched and miserable of the city, let alone the humans who seemed to put little stock in such things? And where did my own mixed blood, tainted as my cousin proclaimed it with a goblin's idiocy and ugliness, stand to temper that nobility, or not? It was only in my second crossing of the canal that had suddenly appeared in front of me—red with the Mad River’s flow far to the south of anywhere the Mad River actually ran in Bordertown—that I realized through this confusion that something was wrong.

I looked up, noticed the building far ahead of me along the street that seemed to have been forcibly merged with an older, more ramshackle building, gables and steel beams twisted over each other like climbing plants that battled for sunlight along a wall. In front of me a length of the old city wall undulated motionlessly out of the street below, cracked, graffiti-mottled concrete frozen in an arc like an enormous, strangely-patterned snake. Nothing had perceivably changed in the moments my attention had wandered from the city, no sound of collision or flash of light, simply a rearrangement into chaos from the already-tenuous order of the city on the Border. As the first cries of panic and confusion began to sound around me I turned sharply on my heel, taking off at a run toward whence I had come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story of the True Heir of the Realm alluded to by Runner and Goblin (as well as the story of Wolfboy who may or may not be an asshole) can be found in Will Shetterly’s duology of Bordertown novels, _Elsewhere_ and _Nevernever._ Also, for the tiny percentage of readers who would get this I imagine Corwyn of Aldon House/Long Lankin is probably this universe's stand-in for Eshevis Tethimar. (Never ask Runner why he stopped going by "Fox.")


	11. Chapter 11

The first blind alley I found myself in looked as though it had once been someone’s front hall, cracked plaster over bare timbers speaking of an abandoned house too shoddy for any but the most desperate squatters to call home. The second ended with an expanse of brick scrawled with a pattern of ivy and nonsensical symbols that I thought I recognized from near Onion Street, at least half a mile south of where Onion Street should have been. It was only down the third that I finally encountered the human halfway through the window.

“Help! Someone help me, please!” she was screaming, and for a horrified moment I fancied she was trapped there, merged with the glass and the wood of the frame as surely as the buildings around us had merged together. In the next instant I saw that she was only caught there at an awkward angle, her trouser leg snagged on a nail protruding through the interior wall behind her. As I rushed forward to grasp her upper body I saw what had truly provoked the screams: a pack of three Truebloods clad in the head-to-toe red of Blood members making their way toward her through what looked like the ruins of a kitchen beyond the oddly-angled wall. With panic-doubled force I hauled her through the window, leaving a rent patch of cloth and flesh behind on the nail, and we were off and running down the twisted expanse of perhaps-Onion-Street.

Even through the obstacle she had just surmounted the Bloods were hard on our heels. In the absence of all but a few streetlamps sprouting like bright, enchanted flowers from strange entanglements of walls and pavement I could not stop to observe, I relied only on the sense of the direction I  _thought_ I might have come, opposite to the way I had trod and that I begged every favorable spirit would not lead us back around or simply into another dead end. Every turn I took down the way I came back toward some, _any_ recognizable landmark, seemed only to bring them closer for every step we took, distracting me so much that I only belatedly noticed the bright glow of the Danceland sign far enough over the roofs to my left that there was surely—hopefully—only one place we could be.

“My home is just over that fence,” I gasped to the human, turning on my heel to help her over what I hoped was the back fence of the Palace only to fall flat on my face over a curb I was sure had not been there that morning. The next thing I knew I was being hauled upright by my hair, nose gushing blood over my chin to drip copiously onto my shirt. “What is _this?_ ” one pursuant asked in the same tone he might have used to inquire about a particularly repulsive insect.

“That creature? He’s with the Diggers. I’ve seen him around before,” his companion replied, a woman whose facial scars were stained the same color as her crimson leather clothing.

“It must be this too. They’re parties to it. Humans, halfbloods, whatever this creature is, they’ve ruined it. For us all.” The third had a hysterical note to his voice, one I knew all too well from the Truebloods we saw at the Digger House, ones trying to shake the effects of Dragon’s Milk or Goblin Fruit. “Let’s see what it knows.”

The one holding me spun me around to face him: tall, blood-red tips to the crest of hair arcing high over his head, eyes the same True silver as mine. “Your bear the features of the True and Only Realm and yet you look like… this. Are you an aberration caused by whatever has the city in its clutches this night?”

“We don’t know anything! Either of us! Let us go and we’ll… find your new grounds and avoid them as before, I swear it on my own shadow,” I sputtered around a mouthful of blood and a swollen lip.

To one side I saw the human pinned to the ground by the other two, arms wrestled behind her back, a hand over her snapping mouth. My captor seemed about to say more with the breath he had drawn, only to falter, gazing past my shoulder whence a familiar voice sounded: “Leave them, and this place. Now.”

I craned my neck around to see Darel step toward us, unarmed but with a grim light in his face that drew a sneer to my captor’s. “You ceded your right to command us years past, turncoat,” he informed Darel.

“Perhaps, but this is where I command now—along with him” (a jerk of his chin at me) “two duelists and the one who warded this home. You never could hold your own in a fair fight, Madradh—what of one with the odds against you?” He stepped closer, never once breaking eye contact, every movement speaking of a fury I had never seen from him before.

The Blood bared his teeth. “Oh, Darel. So reformed, so kind to lessers now. What have you done but traded one gang for another too squeamish to call itself such?”

“If we care for our own,” Darel said, the corded muscles of his forearms flexing lightly but visibly in the garish spellfire light, “we do not do it at the expense of others. At least others who do not first threaten us.”

The silence following the threat felt long and tense enough to stretch on till the sun rose before I was sent stumbling forward hard enough for me to nearly fall again. “Then you may consider any other succor the Bloods might have provided you from whatever has just happened unavailable,” my captor hissed, hauling his drugged friend up by his shoulder and back along the street whence the five of us had run.

The human, meanwhile, climbed back to her feet. “You didn’t have to do that. Either of you,” she said, voice as shaky as her movements.

“Never mind that. Are you more hurt than this?” I asked, kneeling down to inspect the gash in her leg.

“I think I’m just bleeding a little. If you’ve got some Gold-N-Rod in that fancy house…” Her voice faltered as she glanced from me to Darel, and we exchanged a look.

“Come inside,” I told her, gesturing to the fence at the side of the rear garden with a glance toward Darel. “And… thank you.”

The fury vanished, Darel appeared to have resumed his aloof uncertainty. “You live here, as I do. Hospitality would dictate no less,” he replied gruffly.

***

As we spread Gold-N-Rod ointment (“Disinfects, Heals and Soothes at Half the Price!” the jar lid proclaimed) over the gash in the girl’s leg (“’Vee’ is fine,’ she had haphazardly introduced herself) Queen of Swords appeared at the washroom door with her sword slung over her back and a grim expression on her face. “It’s better uptown, but not much,” she told us.

“What the fuck is ‘it,’ though?” Vee asked before I could open my mouth. “All I know is one minute I’m home and the next minute home is literally right in the middle of some street in Soho. Right next to Blood turf, in fact.”

The last sentence dispersed the anger that had been building on Queen of Swords’s face at such a lack of tact. “No one seems quite sure of anything other than parts of the city have been… rearranged, somehow. From all I heard leaving Dragontown there was only a single street in Gryphon Park that had been merged with another near the dojo, but in Elftown and parts of Little Tooth it seems much worse.”

“So closer to the actual Border, then,” Vee muttered.

“Yes, those accusations are flying already.” Queen of Swords slumped onto the edge of the tub, leaning her sword against the wall. Everyone has determined himself a seeker of truth and no one has come forward as the cause, even those who would be claiming such a thing immediately.”

I stepped to the window and parted the curtains. In the dark it was difficult to see much but several familiar landmarks did seem to be gone, or at least shone through the darkness at strange angles. “Where are the others?” I asked.

“Darel and Tál are both downstairs, and the Magus…” Queen of Swords shook her head. “Tál said that the moment he realized he ran off to check the readings on those instruments he’d placed elsewhere, or to see if they’d been damaged.”

“But they could be anywhere by now! We should look for him! And—“ I stopped dead, chest filling with an icy panic like water flooding my lungs. If this strangeness had originated from the Border itself, what of those located on the other side at the time it had happened? Runner had said hopefully no more than two weeks—the date was near enough that he could be on either side, but with what had just happened…

“Goblin, his magic is more potent than the rest of ours put together and he has a good head on his shoulders despite being an easily-distracted scholar. He’s safer out there than we are stumbling out to track him,” Queen of Swords said. She stood, reaching out to clasp my arm familiarly but not unwelcomely. “Stay, and we can look for him and... anyone else when it’s at least light. And you,” she addressed Vee. “You say your home was one of those moved. Have you anywhere else to go?”

“No, I don’t,” Vee said, dark eyes daring us to ask for elaboration.

“She can stay here if she has nowhere else and you don’t want us leaving, else I’d take her to the Diggers. I’ll give up my bed if no one else—“ I began, only to be quelled by a glance from the Queen.

“Goblin. She can sleep downstairs. I think I have a spare toothbrush, as well. Only… don’t lose your head, I beg you. No one can afford to at the moment, whatever’s happened.”

In short moments, a freshly washed Vee clad in a nightdress of the Queen’s was seated on the reclining sofa arranging pillows and blankets around herself. “I’m sorry about your home,” I told her for wont of anything more constructive to fill the silence that humans so seemed to fear.

“It was a fucking husk south of Tintown. I only stayed because no one bothered me there and I could get salvage work sometimes,” she replied. “This is a trade up in every way. So, y’know, thanks.”

I murmured a polite acknowledgement, lingered a moment, then turned to retreat to my own room just as I heard her say, “You were that guy who offered me his jacket. Like, half a year ago. Unless there are more el—Truebloods with grey skin and curly black hair, but I haven’t seen any. Uh… thanks for that, too.”

Eyes wide, I stepped closer to her. The dark tangles and broad features wasted by hunger re-formed themselves in my mind into that half-remembered face, once shadowed by a hood in the dark and masked with the dull, miserable anger of the helpless. “I only wish I could have done more,” I said, voice quiet even in the still room.

She flashed me a lopsided smile. “Well, this’d be a start.”

***

I awoke in surprise to light pouring through the window, my mental turmoil and my throbbing face apparently not enough to have kept me from some amount of sleep. Through the window an unfamiliar landscape stretched before me. To the north the small amount of the Mad River I could usually see had been blocked by what looked like a section of the old city wall—perhaps the way I had run last night, though I thought I remembered that being the other side of the city entirely. The Mock Avenue clock tower stood to the west surrounded by a cluster of small shops too Realm-picturesque to be from anywhere but uptown, the clock still proudly showing its usual wrong time. Staring, I donned fresh clothes and hurried down the stairs to where Maris, the Magus, and a curious Vee were gathered around the table poring over a scatter of unusually static lists of thaumaturgical readings I had come to recognize from the former two’s work. “Magus! Thanks the spirits!” I blurted, my undignified rush forward fortunately disguised by Maris who stood up to enfold me in an embrace I slightly awkwardly accepted.

“I hear you were the hero of the night last night,” she told me.

I glanced blankly around the table, then realized to what she referred. “I ran, and then lost a fight with the street. Darel was the true hero. Where are…”

“He and the others went to scout things out together, and procure whatever supplies might be found,” the Magus replied, shoving the papers away from the space before one chair. “Queen of Swords said to tell you she would stop by the Border offices to see if anyone had come through from the Realm since last night.”

Half heartened, half apprehensive at the thought but touched that she had thought of both me and Runner, I sat down at the table, gladly accepting a cup of something hot. “So… do you know any more than anyone else?” I asked.

He ruefully shook his head. “All we were able to do was to collect what information we could from the instruments that weren’t damaged or missing and bring those back here. The thaumaturgical flow does seem to be disrupted even somewhat more than usual, so we were forced to take the calculating incantation off the numbers and work them out ourselves,” he elaborated with a gesture toward the completely still pages.

“Last night there was a huge spike of _something_ around ten PM but there’s not a lot to indicate whether it came from the Border or somewhere in town,” Maris added. “Our working theory is that… well, you remember our theory about tectonic plates? Where there are tremors, like streets just rearranging themselves occasionally, there are going to be bigger quakes, like the close of the Border. Or... well, this.” She turned to me, face obviously drawn even behind the leaves that obscured it. “The second big quake’s finally come and no one we've talked to has any clue what to do about it besides basic damage control. Even if we do figure out what caused this… how do we put an entire town back together? Where do we even start?”

I swallowed hard, pushing aside my mug and rolling up my sleeves, frightened by her words but determined not to let that stop me. “Is there anything I can do to help you? If not I need to see if I can find the Digger House in all of this.”

“We can work at sorting this out ourselves. Go and help the ones who have been displaced,” the Magus said.

I nodded before turning to the still-silent Vee, meeting her wary eyes across the table. “Come with me,” I told her, “and perhaps we can make it different this time.”


	12. Chapter 12

“I see… a church? I think?” Vee called from her position atop the garden wall we’d found blocking our way. “It’s definitely by the canal but it’s two stories. It’s next to a red Trubie-looking house with a bottle tree in the front yard, if that helps.”

“I think that used to be down the street from the garden I frequent,” I replied, glancing around for anything to lift me up to her point. A scramble up a latticed wooden structure nailed into the mortar revealed nothing familiar and I dropped back to the ground with a sigh. “Forgive me. I only wish I knew what I was doing.”

“Goblin, if _anyone_ knew what they were doing then you wouldn’t be dragging someone who flunked out of the Diggers back to work with you on your day off,” Vee said. “God, the way everything’s twisted together is so weird. I know streets move around sometimes but I’ve never heard of it happening like this. Should we try that fork tagged with all those runes? I think I hear yelling."

I took a deep, centering breath, wishing that I had a faster way of travel, or the talent for magical location, or anything but my own uselessness. "Yes. Let's try that way."

***

The two humans were trying and failing to knock the bricks loose from a sturdy-looking wall bisecting the other side of a door at our approach, their curses and blows audible for at least a block beforehand. “No use. It’s totally fused,” the short, dark one was saying with the exaggerated calm of one near to complete panic. “We go to all this trouble finding a halfway decent squat and now _this_ happens?”

“It’s the same through the windows. Stuff’s stuck through the wall. I can see your paintings sticking out. Just the tips of the frames. Fucking magic,” her companion, barefoot and dressed in what might have been a discarded tablecloth, replied.

"How dare you lay the blame on the Realm's laws?" the third snapped, a halfblood dressed in the draping, leaflike silks more readily found on Dragon's Tooth Hill youth enjoying Soho casually. “Such magic is forced into these shapes by the poisons and electric disturbances your kind force into the very air, not by its own nature.”

"Okay, listen bitch," the first human began. She and the tablecloth-wearer (cracking her knuckles with the air of one who knew her way about a fight) stepped forward, directly across our path and there was nothing for it.

“Stop!” I cried, drawing shocked looks from all present. “This was your home?”

“For all the good it’s done us,” the second human muttered. “Don’t suppose you’re here to fix this?”

 “No, but I work with the Diggers. We’re trying to find our way to their Carmine Street house—please, if you need shelter you should come,” I urged, attempting to transpose myself between the humans and the halfblood before I entirely realized what I was doing. “Just… bring any belongings you might have salvaged and come with us.”

Three suspicious glances passed over us, but three figures gathered up armfuls of clothing and valuables and followed us down the alley.

***

“Hello? Anyone? Preferably anyone with a ladder?” The voice came from the top of a building that looked like it belonged near the Elfhaeme Gate, all tall, swooping, completely smooth white angles that would not have allowed the robe-clad human to descend easily from its surface. The strange objects set next to him seemed to be hindering, rather than helping, the progress he was attempting to make down that surface only to be stymied by the steep angle of descent each time. “The Internet isn’t going to broadcast itsel—Hey! You guys down there! For the love of Pete, tell me you can get me down? I really need to report back to HQ. And pee.”

I stepped toward the building, noting how tall it truly was as I drew closer before the halfblood—Feather, her friends had called her—stepped forward. “Jump. I can slow your descent a bit,” she told the human.

“Can you get my rig down, too? There's no way I can leave this behind.” He gestured toward the device which seemed to be composed of equal parts complicated-looking human technical creations and glowing tubes of what looked like fairy dust-infused paint. In a small glass tank next to him a rat ran in circles in a spinning wheel, the glow of the equipment ebbing and flowing with its progress.

"Lower it off with you."

A contemplative squint at the parts. “This’ll be complicated, it’s kind of in a bunch of pieces. Can you do the Ratman here first? Actually, if I just gathered it up—“

With copious amounts of negotiating, cursing, and negotiating again the various parts of the rig as well as the human himself were lowered shakily to the ground (I thanked the powers that Feather did not call upon me to aid her.) “Thanks,” he panted. Under his robe his shirt bore the legend ‘Iron Maiden,' and I suddenly wished with all my heart that Queen of Swords were here to steady us all with her unfailing resilience. “Long shot, but do you know the way to the BINGO office on Mock Avenue? I mean, it’s usually thataway but today not so much.”

“We haven’t found Mock Avenue yet, but you’re welcome to walk with us. We're, er, looking for Carmine Street,” I told him.

He blinked. “Isn’t Carmine where that one canal bridge… uh, used to be? I _think_ I saw it over this way.” He indicated the right of a fork in the road ahead. “If I go with you can one of you help me carry my setup here? I’ve got coffee beans…”

***

“I told you it was about to hit the fan,” the Trueblood was saying as we approached with our diverse new burdens, the accents of her despondent voice revealing that she spoke the language I had slowly come to recognize as English in truth instead of through a spell. “Anytime the Border goes all red and misty it’s bad news. Remember Shortstuff’s little Aldon House encounter?”

“We’ve talked about this. This can’t be specific to you,” her companion, rust-colored water up to the thighs of his artfully ripped velvets, called over the bankside. “Or is there some kind of specific divination thing where you look at the Border and it tells you stuff?”

“There might be! You can divine from almost anything if the ley energies are right!” She craned her neck hard toward one window of the house half-submerged in the bend of what looked like the Mad River proper, not the canal I had come to know the ways of. Half of it seemed buried in the steep red-brown bank as the other half sent the current into slow eddies around the side of one brick wall. “The top cabinets are still above water, at least.”

“Any of the food ones? Well, let’s find out.” Against the current the human wrestled the door open. A moment of splashing and his head protruded from a window toward the Trueblood. “Well, the good news is we have a loaf of bread and a thing of Marmite. The bad news is all the rest of the food was in the fri—“ His eyes focused on the six of us over her shoulder, widening with alarm. “Uh, looks like we’ve got company.”

The Trueblood wheeled on us, producing a knife from a sheath at her waist quicker than I could blink, almost not faltering at all at our numbers. Meeting her eyes, I help up a conciliatory hand. “It’s all right. We mean no harm. Do you require supplies?”

She regarded me cautiously, scanning us for any who might have taken exception to their presence. “Supplies for five and some clue what the hells to tell our landlord.”

Nodding, I bit my lip. “I may be able to provide you with the first.”

***

We might have spent the day long looking for the house had some enterprising person not thought to write several new signs for it on large, stiff sheets of paper and posted them about the street where the front of the building had been completely subsumed into a shop not far from the eating establishment OMGWTFBBQ. Ciara met me near the back door that led into the main hall, face drawn but with lines softening as I approached. “Come in,” she told me, leading me toward the fraction of the building that remained where numerous faces I had seen just the previous day had clustered nervously. “Alejandro just got back from the Plum Street branch and they’re full to capacity—whatever’s happened to Soho happened hard. A lot of the larger squats are turned half inside-out, and with us like this we’re not in much of a state to take on the extra.”

“Is everyone all right? Are they… trapped?” I blurted. Around me my new-found associates milled, clearly unsure of what to do, the BINGO operator (“Jack,” he had introduced himself, “for ‘of all trades’ or just ‘off’”) glancing indignantly at Feather and the wading human who had begun to set his things down on the ground as they listened.

“Everyone’s accounted for, but the rest…” Ciara waved a hand about. From the angle I could see it seemed that the kitchen, the reception hall, the room full of spare clothing and a good deal of the main hall had all been subsumed. Things melded together without rhyme or reason—here part of the clothes drying protruded from a wall, while to its right several stacked tables and chairs protruded from a concrete pillar in a manner that suggested some sort of fundamental merging. “The vast majority of the kitchen is inaccessible, the hygiene facilities are apparently part of next door now and emergency services obviously aren’t responding to any of this. We’ve been debating whether to proceed straight to knocking down walls.”

I attempted a laugh. “Yes. All right. What do you need from me?”

“I need to get in touch with Water Street to see if there’s any kind of overarching plan. Can you just hold things down here? Speak with our new neighbors, keep everyone calm, see if you can at least organize things so there’s a place to sleep. I’ll be back as soon as possible, or send word.”

“Of course. Go, please, I’ll be fine.” At the relief on her face I almost took the words back, but her confident squeeze of my hand restored some of my own confidence. As she strode away I turned toward the curious faces of the crowd, drawing a deep breath. “Come, let’s organize as she said.”

***

As the residents began to gather together what furniture and belongings as might be found, led by the edgy but willing Vee, I managed to wrestle the brazier we kept chained to a fence outside for when the power—any power—failed, and began a meal of rice seasoned with some greenish herb that someone had apparently procured from an opportunistic trader that morning. Rescuing the bowls from the single unsubsumed kitchen cabinet I had begun to set them (sans utensils) across the intact table when the noise finally permeated the barrier from my ears to my mind. In a city full of strange mechanical din I hardly noticed many such noises anymore, but the something familiar in the rhythm of the sound—a sound I had both heard and felt in my very bones—finally drew my recognition. I half-slammed the remaining bowls onto the table, indicated that everyone eat, and then sprinted around the side of the building just as Runner was removing his helmet. It fell to the ground from his surprised, then eager fingers as I pulled him to me for the longest, most desperate, sweetest kiss I had experienced to date in my short lover’s career, breath catching in my throat as his fingers anchored in my hair. “The Magus told me you’d come here,” he told me breathlessly as our lips finally parted, “but I could as easily have told him that. Are you well?”

“Perfectly,” I replied, wondering whence came his disbelieving squint only to suddenly remember my occasionally throbbing nose. “It’s nothing. I tripped. And what of you?” I demanded, unwilling to loose my grip on his arms even as I marked a few interested Digger House residents gathering behind us.

“Apparently I crossed back over just after this had happened.” He drew one of my hands to his lips, kissing the bent knuckles avidly. “The Border itself seems to have been entirely unaffected, but when I found my way out I managed to end up in a patch of the Nevernever. It took some five hours and aid from some of my customers there whom you’ve met, but I eventually found my way back to the palace and thence here, though by way of most of the town.”

“That was certainly how it felt to us,” I agreed, leaning closer to feel the rhythm of his heart against mine. “Have you any idea what… well, if not _why_ this has happened then _what_ exactly has happened to the town at large?”

“Finding out the what as best I could was my first step following my certainty that you were all right,” Runner told me. “As best I can gather, more things are rearranged north of the canal but much less chaotically—streets and houses simply switched with each other rather than merged, that sort of thing. Magic and tech seem to be working no more abnormally than usual, and no one wants to touch Soho.”

“I’m sure Soho at large suspects as much,” I replied. The rest of the Palace…” I trailed off, thinking of the houses merged together, left without water or heat or even intact rooms. And of ours, intact and near as luxurious as its namesake by comparison. “I have a plan. The beginnings of one, at any rate. I’ll need you for a great deal of it, though, and my newfound BINGO operator acquaintance if he hasn’t wandered off yet. Might you put your quest for information aside a moment to help me?”

Runner pressed a kiss to the curve of my jaw, my hand held against his chest. “I owe you over two weeks’ worth of devotion. It would be the least I might do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goblin's little entourage are pure random Bordertown color since my capacity for canonwank only goes so far, even in a shared universe with a lot of moving pieces. The origins and operations of BINGO, the B-town ISP, are detailed in Cory Doctrow's _Welcome to Bordertown_ story "Shannon's Law," one I enjoy not because of the relative likeability of the titular Shannon but because it's a damn good take on clashes of both culture and entire laws of the universe.


	13. Chapter 13

It took a ride of ten minutes to make our way back to the Palace once Ciara had returned, and near an evening to convince the others (mainly Darel) of the merits of the plan. Fifteen minutes the next morning saw the newly-returned Jack situated on a platform the Magus had once built in an amenable neighbor’s tree for purposes of observing magic fluctuations from the Border. As Runner returned to inform Carmine Street that all was well, Queen of Swords and I journeyed to the nearest market to buy as much food and other necessities as the wary shopkeepers would part with for the small amount of coins and tradeables we had come up with between us. Heavy-laden with oats, rice, dried fruit, sanitary items and firewood we returned to where Darel, the Magus and Tál were already beginning to direct the gathering displaced about the small but empty grounds of the Palace.

In short order we were rejoined by Runner, and then by two other former residents of the Palace of whom I had only heard: Isaol (beautiful though hardly more than a child, bearing contributions of preserved honeyfruit and lavender-scented soap from the wealthy and apparently generous noble clan whom she served) and Echo (tall, aged and severe enough to make Darel resemble the most relaxed and uncaring of Dustheads, with a cargo of bed linens too shabby for the hostelry that employed her but now distributed to the grateful new residents as shelters, blankets, and even clothing.) To my even greater delight, as the day drew on I noted the approach of Oisin and Evan, bearing four creates full of the yields of the Little Onion Street Community Garden given freely by those alongside whom I had toiled for so many months. With the freshest and most perishable of the latter cooked into a not-unappetizing stew, as the Magus discreetly checked the wards against forcible entry and theft on the first and second stories I aided the rest of the Palace in seeing the makeshift, troubled camp into a state of relative rest in the cooling darkness. For some time I sat among the dwellers, learning names (Lyta, Viktor, Dragora, Ender, true World names mingling with ones for popular use and aliases as much a mask as the bravado or anger they affected) and offering aid or condolence where I might in the mingled atmosphere of revelry and hopelessness. In time I returned to the upper floor with Runner, both of us too exhausted for anything but sleep but both far gladder to be in the other’s arms than words might have said.

The second day dawned with further updates from BINGO as provided by Jack and the neighbors whose tree he occupied (the latter of whom had accepted my petition to allow the new guests to use their indoor washroom and their well, to my eternal gratitude.) Uptown was less chaotic with few structures merged together but tensions were high where many entire blocks had been relocated to completely different neighborhoods. Living things did not seem to have been merged with anything, though in Soho folk armed with scrying bowls and talismans for searching had taken to the streets looking for any trapped on the wrong sides of walls or in buried houses by the event. Those who dealt with emergencies were debating whether to venture south of Ho Street where no one paid tax but which contributed to the city greatly in other ways. A rough map of the new city layout was being compiled to be posted at the Poop information board near the docks, and anyone interested in amateur cartography ought to speak to Pony there. (At this Runner took off to do so at my urging, leaving me to finish preparing the morning’s potato porridge alone.) At least two other houses, on Mock Avenue and Bleak Street, were offering similar services to the Palace’s and any latecomers might be directed there if room were at a premium. The distribution of this information—any information—seemed to hearten most of the discouraged refugees and following the announcement a number of them departed to seek out friends, or jobs, or simply misplaced homes. Some few did not return as the day wore on and I hoped fervently they had found what they were looking for even as I practiced the usual mediation between tense, desperate, occasionally bigoted or fearful occupants. As no word had come from Ciara by the evening I resolved to visit Carmine Street the next day, oversaw the distribution of dinner and secondhand clothing mostly donated by an incredibly generous tailor based off of Ho Street, and eventually retired with the lately-returning Runner. Though he had nearly spent both fuel and spellbox entirely driving about the newly-rearranged streets, his neatly scribed new map of the town was both beautiful and vital and I admired copiously before determining that this night, at least, sleep might wait.

It was on the third day that I had ventured upstairs for the house’s single remaining extra blanket, a consideration for a human and her halfblood daughter who had none, only to encounter the Magus slumped on the stairs outside his room. “Are you well?” I asked, hesitating a moment before sitting down on the step below his.

“Maris thinks I should present my findings on the Border’s effects on these lands to the city council, or possibly the UWF, in hopes of finding an answer to this problem that does not involve demolishing buildings entirely,” he told me, eyes downcast.

“The research you conducted with Second?” I blurted, then cursed myself for my lack of tact even as he sadly nodded. “But… why not? Even if there’s half a chance of returning things to how they were I would not doubt for a moment it lay in what you have done.”

“Or I might well make the situation worse, or something of _his_ hidden in knowledge I might not understand could cause his original aim.”

The insecurity in the Magus’s ordinarily mild, pleasant voice unnerved me than near anything I had seen or heard in the past few days. I thought hard for a few moments, staring at the worn, scuffed wood beneath our feet. “I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t,” I told him. “I could not order you to use the knowledge any more than I could for you to keep from it. I could only possibly tell you to do what you feel is right.”

“I half wish someone _would_ order me one way or the other,” the Magus said with a twist of half his mouth. “Maris has, but… I’ve never told her, not everything. She knows I had a research partner before her who was my lover, that we disagreed and that he returned to the Realm as a result, but I kept the rest from her. Because I was proud, and all too eager to seem the wise teacher, particularly to a young human eager for knowledge. There never seemed a good time to tell her the rest of the story even when I did eventually wish to tell her. Least of all now.”

“Do you really imagine she would think so much less of you?”

He pinched his nose over his spectacles with a sigh. “I was born to a clan of the bards and lorekeepers who gather history and tales for the Crown. Those who might mislead for a better story or to better suit the interests of those they served but who might never be caught out in such deception, even less admit to it. I’ve often sworn to myself that I’d left such scruples behind in the pursuit of knowledge unsullied by the politics of the Realm, but it’s simple enough to _think_ such things.” He tossed his braid off his shoulder with a decisive motion. “I know I must tell her, even with all the face I would doubtless lose if only in my long-abandoned family’s esteem. I only need to gather the fortitude to do it.”

Unsure of what else to do, I nodded, standing up to claim the blanket I had originally come for. Not for the first time I envied the human way of reassuring with a touch, far too intimate for those of the Blood but with the capacity to say things a hundred words never might. “You have the strength, and more. Whatever you decide about the notes, I know you and she will have made the right decision.” I paused, glancing down at him. “All of you speak so frankly with me, and I’m grateful for it, even though I’m sure my counsel is hardly the best.”

The Magus smiled, more surely this time. “Well, you’re very easy to speak to.”

***

Over the next days those with contacts in Bordertown began to abandon the hard Palace grounds for the houses of friends, or re-formed squats, or stretched-to-capacity hostels which charged but which boasted true beds and more than one washroom each. Those who remained grew increasingly dirty, sore, and, above all, bored in the absence of money for entertainment or even the daily work provided by the Digger House. All of us did our best to find tasks for them to cover both needs (Echo in particular selecting a number of the better-kept ones for interviews at her hostelry for cleaning or cooking work) but following the event the usual occupations of Soho had in great part stopped as well. For my own part, Ciara had told me that the remaining donation records had been in one of the inaccessible rooms and as our supplies dwindled my fears of uselessness returned. Runner, at least, had enough work to keep us in food and other necessities but as fuel for his motorcycle was dearer than my mother’s jewels and keeping the spellbox powered was taxing even for him and the Magus together he was forced to deliver most things on foot.

As the fifth day since the event dawned I was breaking crates for firewood as Tál helped Feather and her former squatmates (Zulie and Gone Girl) prepare the morning meal when I saw Ciara striding toward us across the well-trampled dirt of the Palace grounds. “Well met!” I called to her over a makeshift tent, the occupant of which grumbled in protest. “How does Carmine Street fare?”

“Much as before,” Ciara replied. Her face was as weary as I had ever seen it and she regarded the yard with an expression of mingled pity, weariness and hope. “I only came to beg some labor in exchange for food and perhaps shelter.”

“Sit down,” I urged her, indicating a camp chair someone had set up near the firepit. “What is it that you need?”

“You know that farm that sends us cabbage and potatoes every month?” I nodded, and she continued, “Well, with how the streets are right now they physically can’t get into town for the delivery without going around through the Nevernever, and they’re _not_ going through the Nevernever. We’re nearly out of food and we need this delivery but it’s two miles away and can only be gotten to the Digger House on foot. If anyone here could help us out they could at least eat and sleep at the House this evening.”

A few interested refugees began to gather around Ciara as Jack called down from his tree, “Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of farms out past the suburbs are having those issues. Factories in West Canal, too. Magical transport is about as reliable as ever, and a couple people are even talking about shortages in the parts of town no one cares about.”

I glanced up in alarm. “Surely the council will have to do something about it?”

“Down here? No, they’re too busy dealing with the people with money who actually matter.” He paused. “And don’t call me Shirley.”

I tried to parse his meaning before writing it off as some human idiom the spell couldn’t process. “But… yes, everyone who wants to, go. Well, eat and then go. Vee, would you be willing to go with them as someone who knows the way back here? No, I suppose that’s not especially—“

“I’ll go.” The words had come from Tál, who had finally started the fire as I spoke. “This seems important and I’ve little enough to do at the docks these days. Everyone in need of work has flocked there since the river’s the only open way through the town.” He glanced at Ciara, who nodded briefly with the smile that transformed her features from an incongruous blend of human and Trueblood into the picture of kindness and reassurance, and he looked away quickly.

As Jack hopped down from the tree to receive a bowl of boiled oats with a few precious handfuls of dried blueberries, I approached him from behind. “Are there many of these cases? Tál said work was scarce at the docks—why aren’t more people bearing goods to the more inaccessible parts of town on foot?”

He shrugged. “The lack of info transfer capacity, probably. If no one knows about it, no one can help. I mean, BINGO’s working on it but a lot of our servers are still down and half the people in B-town don’t trust the Internet anyway. People like your boyfriend who pass it around the old-fashioned way are probably the best bet Soho has right now.”

I blinked, another idea beginning to form slowly but surely. “Hey. Earth to Goblin? Do you still want us to sweep for trash, or should we wait till everyone else gets back to help?” Vee asked me.

“Er… yes, but can you oversee that once you’re finished serving? I need to speak to Runner before he leaves,” I replied, hurrying off toward the broad doors of the Palace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously the Magus's hangups about truth or lack thereof are kind of weird from a human perspective, but it plays off of two big parts of Trueblood culture: beauty and 'truthiness' rather than truth being a big part of how the Realm works (this is a plot point in the aforementioned "Shannon's Law") and elves/fairies dealing a lot in distorting/stretching/generally fucking with the truth to serve their own interests (more a general folklore thing but entirely applicable to the setting.) And obviously no one likes being caught out in a lie no matter how their laws of nature work. Poor The Magus.


	14. Chapter 14

“Forgive me for my foolishness—“

“Goblin, if you say that one more time I will never kiss you again.”

“Mab save me, never! All right, but might we review the changes once more?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So. Bordertown needs relief to the parts of itself which may not be Soho but aren’t exactly Dragon Tooth Hill either. Delivery of food and goods, supplies for those left without homes, simple information as to how the rest of the town fares. This would require a lot of time, funds, and power that the city heads may or may not have.”

“So far so good.”

“The good people of Soho who have been left homeless and without work band together to create a force of these who will do that work for a small stipend from the city council, freeing emergency services and the already overtaxed uptown volunteers to set about rebuilding in the more respectable parts of the city.”

“One of yours, I believe.”

“Come now, we did this jointly. At any rate. With the aid of what we have of BINGO, a number of the force will focus on gathering information about _where_ exactly the lines of supply and communication are severed, bridging the gap between those who need and those who might help as well as simply spreading the word.”

“And recruiting new workers as well.”

“Good. Wonderful. Is this a true plan?”

“The beginnings of one, at the very least. I’ll need to talk to those who may be able to aid us in bringing this before the council as well as polishing and sweetening it a bit to appeal to those used to the parlance of government. But if we’re to build this sort of a bridge it’s a fair start.”

"Perhaps we might dictate it to Queen of Swords so she might write it beautifully."

"Of course! I wonder if Darel would agree to present it? He would probably go over better with the council than most of us."

"Tál... what might Tál do?"

"Keep hauling things for the Diggers the while, I imagine. Generosity suits him, it seems. Either that or Ciara does."

"You don't think... truly?"

"You didn't see the way they were looking at each other earlier, when I stopped by there to ask about all of this. I heard her say something about being far too old as well, but I didn't know to which of them she referred."

"How wonderful."

"Unexpected, but wonderful. ...I should get some sleep, and you should as well. Join me upstairs?"

"Let me look over it once more and see to our guests."

"All right, but don't burn yourself out on this before we've even begun. These things do take time, even with the cooperation of so many."

“I swear. Go and sleep, love.”

***

In the light of multiple guttering candles, I was still bent over the plans Runner had drawn up, noting down the most efficient routes for foot and vehicle traffic through the new arrangement of Soho, when a light step behind me made me look up. Queen of Swords stepped back from the sink, setting down a clay pot full of writing brushes covered in various bright inks. "Darel threatened to break them all over my head if I kept leaving splashes of paint in the washroom," she explained. "You're up late."

"There's a good reason for it, which I will tell you if it ever comes to anything," I replied. "What keeps you from sleep yourself?"

“A late consignment for my work. The Tourist Board offered us twice their usual rate to help them rush out the new official travel guide with notes on the rearrangement by the end of the week."

Vaguely, I remembered the guild of bespoke calligraphers she worked for (in addition to something like three other occupations) and nodded. "You do so much with your time, and yet I know so little of any of it," I reflected. "Less than near any of the rest of the Palace, even."

"Most of them have said the same at one time or another." Water stuttered from the tap and over her fingers, staining them crimson, then marigold, then rose, then as clean as the fine hairs that tipped the brushes. "I imagine for some time it was because I was the only one truly seeking to hide myself from the world and not only from... well, myself."

"You were? Why?" I blurted, then could have boxed my own ears. "Forgive me. If you've sought to hide your reasons for being here then I have no business—"

"It's not so much that. It's been near the five years since the Return and no one's sought me out, nor have I heard of any searches for one matching my description. It was only that in the meantime I put up enough of a defensive front that I put the rest off of asking, then by the time all was well no one thought to care anymore." Her eyes were downcast in both truth and remembered pain, and I rose from my chair to stand next to her at the sink.

"Would you tell me, then?" I asked. It was true—in all the months we had known each other I had never thought to ask, assuming a great secret but never thinking of what it might be, or how to ease such a burden.

She shook her head with an impatient chime of the small bells that bound the tips of her braids. "It's hardly as grand or unique as that. Like half the other Realm folk here, I was running from a betrothal. Only... the circumstances..." She drew a deep breath. "My father's sister once caused a similar scandal in her youth, although she had the patience to wait until after the union. Thanks to her we were disgraced, though hardly enough to practically affect anything beyond my clan's inflated opinions of themselves, and thus they had hoped to restore face by marrying me to someone important enough to return their name to respectability. Important, but by all accounts disagreeable."

"Who was it?"

"Of all things, some royal by-blow who dwelled in the western marshes near whence Tál came. Too important to have strangled at birth or traded to the humans in the old way, but mad, or deformed, or so the stories said. Though it was less that than the thought of consigning myself to some forsaken quagmire far from anything for the rest of my—Goblin?"

At the phrase "royal by-blow," I had suspected. The mention of the western marshes drew the curtain back further, and by the speculation of madness or deformity I had begun to laugh. The peals of my merriment echoed sharply through the tiny kitchen, my face stained with tears of mirth, of sadness, of the sheer overwhelmed exhaustion of the past week’s toil. Somewhere, distantly, I heard the Queen's voice: "Goblin? What is it? Please, what are you... oh. Oh no. Oh by Mab, it's not true." I managed a nod, the laughter still wrenched from my throat like an unstoppable cataract of merriment. "Goblin. Goblin, stop laughing. _Please._ "

Bracing myself against the stovetop, I gasped for air over and over again, releasing it in steadily weaker, more meandering laughs until I lay half-slumped on the floor, the Queen crouching down next to me. "Well," she said after a moment, "if I had known it was _you_ things would have been much different."

"No, you were right. If it had been me I would have run from such a fate as well. And I did, thanks to Runner." The words felt as though they ought to have contained recriminating vitriol, for her for rejecting her betrothed out of hand or to me for being exactly the pitiful creature she would have reviled, but the outburst had left me completely drained of anything that might have fueled such bitterness. I felt a husk, a shell, a seedpod emptied of its seeds and liable to be born away by the slightest breath of air. "I never heard talk of any plans of marriage, but I imagine my guardian thought it unlikely enough as to be unimportant. I suppose ultimately he was right."

"But you're truly a— the—" She seemed to struggle, and I nodded.

"Not _the_ , but _a_. Well. Not one who would ever occupy the seat of power before such time as the sun dies in the sky and the stars go out. Or at least such time as the kings and queens might fall to the mortals’ fate and require heirs on a regular basis.”

Queen of Swords frowned. "Are you sure of that?"

"Entirely. Even with the Heir herself still elsewhere I would hardly be important enough to—"

"No, that's not what I meant. Perhaps you—it—ugh, by the Crown and the Isle, this is difficult to speak of. Perhaps it was never meant to be the Realm, but somewhere else entirely.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at this place. At its people.” The sudden fervency in her voice matched the steadier and steadier cadence of her words, the shadow of an idea transmuting itself into a theory. “You’ve done so much good since you’ve come here, throughout all of Bordertown. Your work for the Diggers has been tireless, and everyone agrees that the Palace is the more pleasant and united for your presence. Even now—especially now, when it’s needed the most, you’ve taken it upon yourself to aid those around you however you might, for no greater gain than the knowledge that it had to be done and that you might do it. I can think of no greater action befitting any sort of ruler. And you can’t deny—“ she bared her teeth in a sudden, fierce grin—“that near everyone who lives at the Palace once served the Crown, or comes from a line that once did.”

“Are you saying this was all truly fated, somehow?”

“No. Well… no.” She shook her head abruptly. “Perhaps I’ve spent enough time around humans to take fate less seriously than I ought, but I very much doubt it would matter either way.” She gestured toward the back of the house where some few small lights, faerie enchantments and torches, still flowed among the tents for those reading by muted starlight or talking late into the night. I thought of those displaced from homes they had occupied longer than I had known there was such a place as Bordertown, those with nothing left to them but what had been provided, and felt the familiar stab of pity even as she continued: “Regardless of fate or simple chance, you took what you were given by this place and you drew upon what you had to provide for those with less. Who could possibly say where half the people currently occupying our grounds would be if not for the aid that you spearheaded, that you talked the rest of us into helping you provide? Everyone out there is grateful for what you’ve done and would gladly serve you in whatever manner you desired. As, I imagine, would any who dwell in the Palace itself, myself included.”

 “Don’t, please,” I begged. “I don’t to be treated as… as some might say I would be entitled to. Only to be what Bordertown—and all of you—have allowed me to be.”

“I can swear that to you at the least, then.”

We sat in silence for a moment, eyes not quite meeting. “What did you mean,” I finally asked, each word a tentative step into marshy ground like that of the place I had once dwelled, “it would have been different?”

The Queen glanced away, a small smile playing over her lips. “I believe I just told you the better part of it. Save that if your heart had not belonged entirely to Runner from the moment you stepped through the Palace doors then I would have done my best to fulfill my family’s plan for me without knowing it.”

I blinked, and suddenly my mind was flooded with recollections: the Queen’s fingers, so gentle on my face the morning of my second day, her hands twined in my hair on Midsummer, the way the light caught the sheen of sweat off her skin as she sparred with Tál before the doors of the Palace. Over the sudden thunder of my heart, I turned to her, mouth open but with no idea of what to say. “I… that I would… he’s said before… that is, he’s gone so often, and he… I…”

“Hush. Only think on it, if it’s something you would truly care for,” Queen of Swords replied, eyes nonetheless lighted with pleased surprised. “Our true Heir of Bordertown.”

I found my voice enough to laugh once again, more surely and this time with relief. “Only if you never address me so again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queen of Swords doing calligraphy professionally seemed like a good nod to her canon counterpart's command of Barzhad script. (She also works at a store that sells semi-legal Realm imports at marked-down prices and teaches Trueblood fencing and dance at a studio in Letterville but none of that information was particularly relevant to the chapter.) Additionally, if we shadows have offended regarding some piece of B-town lore regarding the royal succession of the Realm I managed to miss during my research for this crossover, all I can say is I've tried to keep it vague enough to be plausible and thank you for bearing with me in this wonderful clusterfuck of a shared world.


	15. Epilogue

“Thanks again for taking this off our hands,” Evan told me as I wrestled the last load of corn off the back of the handcart the Little Onion Street Community Garden kept for the purpose. “I think I might have to have a word with Emer about her fertilizing spells again. It’s starting to straight-up encroach at this point.”

“Well, at least it’s not kudzu this time,” I replied, provoking a laugh. “Will you and Oisin be attending the concert?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. Us, my lady, and the rest of my writing group at the very least, and that’s if I can’t take credit for most of the UWF linguistics department. I put a poster up in the staff room and just about everyone RSVPed."

“Your writing group?” The fact that she wrote surprised me more than it perhaps ought to have—she studied words for a living, after all, and had learned more of the tongues of the Realm in the past month than I had managed to learn of English (or any other of the World tongues) since my arrival. “What is it that you write? I would gladly read it.”

Evan laughed. “Don’t commit to anything right off. How do you feel about tentacles?”

The thought make me blink. “The limbs of squid and the like? I… suppose I hadn’t thought on it before. What sorts of stories are there about tentacles?”

“You’d be surprised,” Evan said, a spark of amusement in her eye. The sight of Runner approaching from behind her with another crate took my mind from whether she were laughing at me as I stepped forward to take the other end. “Nice banner, by the way,” she continued.

“Our… third illuminated it,” I said, resting my gaze once more on the banner draped over the arch facing the street, the words SOHO BRIDGE PROJECT BENEFIT CONCERT – AUGUST 28, GRYPHON PARK – FEATURING GOBLIN MARKET– HALFWITTED RAGPICKER’S CHILD – FIG AND MARIA – LAMBTON WYRM – THE TIGER’S BRIDE – NIGHTINGALE penned in the Queen’s elegant, swooping hand. Evan smiled and stepped away with a wave, heaving the cart up and back along the street.

We wrestled the boxes toward the stand we had procured for food, setting it down with a number of others containing late summer peaches (to be grilled) firepods (to be popped like the corn) and countless bottles of drink (to have their dregs tossed over the coals of the dying fires as the evening drew to a close) before straightening up directly into Runner's arms. "I can't tarry for much longer," he told me, placing a kiss on my lips like a blessing. "Would you walk with me to the Gate?"

I glanced around at the preparations. On the stage, the first act—a human who styled herself Nightingale and sang with a brightly-colored scarf wrapped over her face—was aiding the young human who ran the loudspeakers in adjusting the sound of her voice for later in the evening. Others, those former residents of the Palace grounds whom I had recruited from the Soho Bridge Relief Effort itself or from the new Digger House on Mock Avenue led by Ciara and her newly-recruited (and newly-beloved) Tál, hurried about the grounds of Gryphon Park carrying sound equipment or chairs or the wares donated by rich uptown benefactors to be auctioned off at the end of the evening for further funds. My eyes finally lighted on the Queen of Swords, who blew a kiss to me in the human fashion from her place near the stage where she appeared to be engaging the Palace’s newest occupant in conversation.

“Vee,” I addressed the latter, glancing around the curtain of hair revealed to be a silvery color to rival a Trueblood’s in the absence of dirt. “Will you be able to oversee things for a moment? It’s only that Runner—“

“Go. I can handle this,” she replied, dismissing me with a shooing gesture. “I’m going to be helping Psyche set up her telescope for the fortune-telling stuff for the next while but everything’s delegated at least. Go see off true love’s first kiss and I promise it’ll all be here when you get back.”

The gratitude of my smile felt weak, but it was what I could muster. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You shouldn’t have to—“

“For the billionth time today, this is my job, and also the least I can do.” She placed her hands on her hips with a glare. “Look, not to get all sentimental under pressure but you take me in like I’m your own sister, you give me a job and a place to live, and you think I’m going to let you do all this yourself? Especially with Runner leaving? Goblin, I love you but you’re an idiot sometimes.” She grinned, no doubt mainly at the stunned reaction such frank, humanish statements usually provoked in me. “Also, if this all fails horribly at least I can blame everything on you.”

I made as though to apologize before Queen of Swords stepped forward to lay a kiss on the side of my neck. “You’ve secured Lambton Wyrm _and_ Goblin Market as acts. Your success is assured,” she told me, blowing a kiss to Runner over my shoulder. "The funds will come, and all will be well. Go take a few minutes' rest."

“You’re right. Of course,” I replied, stepping reluctantly from her arms. "Farewell. I'll return soon."

We were waylaid twice more before stepping through the elaborate silver-and-iron arch where park met street, once by a Bridge Project worker wishing to know when the roster for the next week's food deliveries would be posted in the tiny office on Seventh Street, and once by another, a census-taker with an updated list of homes of the formerly displaced as well as folk who still needed them. Having directed them both (with invaluable prompting from Runner whose ability to recall dates and times of things was nearly magic in itself) I stepped with him into the quiet streets of Gryphon Heights where tall, elegant buildings surrounded us like the cliffs of some strange land. The dealings that humans and Truebloods alike conducted there, speaking of trade and diplomacy and exchanges of knowledge between Realm and World, were still quite arcane to me, but given the fact that most of the Bridge Project’s uptown backers seemed to work in such places I could not bring myself to revile such dealings for their own sake as much of Soho seemed to. The folk who lived above the canal, after all, had long since given up forcing the folk of Soho to live as they did, coming to us (I endeavored to assure chary Bridge Project workers and irate, prosperous nobles alike) as our partners rather than our rulers.

Gradually, places of business gave way to tall, stately manors mainly in Trueblood styles, all rough-hewn stone facades and gracefully sweeping outer walls. Beyond them rose the Border, to my eyes a shimmering translucence like light off a hot road, obscuring whatever lay beyond. Runner had told me that he saw tangles of vines, wood, and metal trained intricately into dizzying patterns—sometimes, on clear evenings when we sat together on the front step of the Palace watching the city about us, I imagined that I could see it so as well. “I still don’t know how I’ll carry on the Project without you,” I admitted, taking his arm.

“You’ll still have Vee. She’s been as much a part of starting it up as either of us. And you give yourself far too little credit,” Runner replied. “Just because you won’t have me to remind you of details—“

“You know I’m as likely to forget the food delivery dates as I am to breathe. And I still have no idea how to manage those who are objecting to the plans for the return of the streets to their old order, particularly with the friction they've been raising with the sponsors.” I ran a distressed hand through my hair, braided by both of my loves the prior night into thick strands woven through with green ribbons that gleamed like metal. “I would hardly call those ‘details.’ What if I flounder without you to advise me in what I’m actually doing?”

“On the off-chance that you do then Vee can help. Or the Queen, or Jack, or Darel when he's finally perfected all of his his don't-join-gangs-children speeches for those schools, or anyone. This has always been a group effort, and I forbid you from telling anyone else in my absence of how much better things would be run if I were there.” He glanced at a street sign angled oddly and declaring a cul-de-sac where there was none. “You may, however, tell Maris and the Magus that I wish I could be here to watch them put the streets back in working order.”

I laughed. “You know they’ll both only tell me that nothing is certain even with that shop they untangled and it’s as much their colleagues’ work as—“

“Coming from me, perhaps, but they know perfectly well that you don’t flatter,” he told me with a grin. This close to the Border, blank-faced, grey-clad Truebloods armed with swords and clubs strode back and forth with looks daring wrongdoers to try anything. I gripped Runner's hand a bit tighter, pushing my fears for what his journey would bring to the back of my mind.

“Perhaps. And do tell me if you hear anything of… aught in your travels.“ I glanced away, the familiar medley of hope and ridiculous disappointment rising in my chest. "Though the fact that no one has pursued me in this long still only speaks of my worth in their eyes, I suppose."

“Don’t you dare.” Runner placed a hand on my chin, cupping it to bring our eyes to meet. “The—they were too foolish to appreciate or uphold you in the Realm and now you’re gone. If they haven’t pursued you it’s their loss, our gain. And if anyone ever did come in pursuit…” He gestured back toward Gryphon Park where the Bridge Effort folk of Soho and Uptown alike milled, doing the work that he and I had first organized. “We would meet every warrior of the Realm on the field of battle to keep you.”

“Yes. Yes, all right, I take your point. And… thank you.” A tall, halfblooded guard clad in grey tossed an idly contemptuous glance in our direction and I stepped from Runner’s arms with a sigh. “I suppose you should go.”

“Wait a moment.” Runner reached into one side of his neatly organized pack, drawing forth a small wooden box. “I have something for you first. I had thought to give it to you now and have you open it once I left for the Realm so you might have something to brighten my absence, but I’m far too greedy of your reaction to exercise such restraint.”

“You are one of the least greedy people I’ve ever kno—“ I began ,then stopped as if my breath had been stolen at once from my lungs. The minute brass clasp of the box parted to reveal a tangle of silver and gems—carnelians, opals, quartz and diamonds like shattered fragments of ice, all that I had held for the last time months before as I stood in the Riverside market contemplating World fruit. My mother’s jewels.

Over the lid of the box I could see Runner watching me with a pleased, tentative smile. “I imagine you know of Orient, the human with the gift for finding things,” he told me. “All I had to go on was “the stolen jewels once belonging to the mother of the one who calls himself Goblin,” but it seemed in the end that was enough. Most of it he found in a Trader’s Heaven stall whose owners owed him a favor and were happy to part with them for a so—hhhh!” The force of my embrace knocked him backward somewhat and he clung onto me, laughing as we swayed together on the leaf-etched flagstones beneath our feet. As usual, my stammering tongue was slow to the occasion and I could only offer him “thank you, thank you, _thank you._ ” Behind him, through the grateful tears in my eyes, flickered the Way to the Realm where he would soon vanish for days, or a fortnight, or years. Our lives, our work, would carry on without the other until we were reunited, carrying on together in the city on the Border for as long as it allowed.

For now, at least, it seemed enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the interest of not sounding fatuous, I'll keep this brief: Thank you all for reading this, commenting on it, and helping me to fall deeper in love with the source materials than I even was to begin with. This process has been a blast, even when it was hard, and I'm so glad that you couple others weirdos have been along for the ride.


End file.
